Camerieri

The old sea-front restaurant is run down. It lives a jaded life waiting for some latter-day yuppies to buy the place and at best turn it into a flashy nightclub. Eventually a new owner arrives and plans to celebrate his parents' gold wedding anniversary with a banquet at the restaurant. If the four waiters are to keep their jobs then everything must run smoothly this one night. It doesn't, of course. Before long the quartet has succeeded in creating several tragicomical messes. But just when everything seems to be approaching the final catastrophe ...Paolo Villaggio - one of Italy's greatest comedians, who was the main character in Fellini's last film Voices of the Moon (1989) - plays the head cook, tries to keep up appearances. A professional who works by rate and realizes that the game is up. The surface is corroded, the ship riddled by wood-worm, and the kitchen staff consists of incompetent bunglers. The director, Leone Pampucci, who made a successfuI debut recently with Mille bolle blu (1993), has realized that a restaurant by the sea on a Sunday gives a good cross-section of contemporary, provincial Italy. We find ourselves light years from ''La dolce vita'', ideals are wavered, money is all that matters and vulgar, sparkling taste triumphs. A grotesque group of individuals take the stage to enjoy the family dinner. A meal is once again used to tell unpleasant truths about our time. Pam pucci doesn't make any political allusions, as Luis Bunuel did in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). He refrains from biting satire, as Marco Ferreris' Blowout (1973). He basically illustrates the home-truth that people are what they eat - especially true of Italy, where people always eat a lot. Pompucci also shows, as Peter Greenaway did in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) much of what goes on behind the scenes, both in the kitchen and with the other guests down by the beach. A wife whose husband has been unfaithful to her and a suicidal waiter are among the darker aspects of this comedy. Best is Sandra Milo who plays a cheated tart. It is 30 years since she appeared in Fellini's Eight and a Half (1963). Like an antiquated cinematic monument she yet again performs using her whole register. She has, like the restaurant, seen better days, but it doesn't matter in Pompucci's black comedy, where laughter sticks in your throat. PEL