Riccardo Cocciante, Stefano Salvati’s docu: review
Riccardo Cocciante turned 80 last February 20th. And tomorrow March 4th it arrives on TV first film about his life, “My name is Riccardo Cocciante”. On March 13th “Ho vent’anni con te” will be released, his new album of unreleased songs 20 years after his last release.
“My name is Riccardo Cocciante”, which has already been screened in some Italian cinemaswill be broadcast by Rai1 tomorrow 4 March in prime time and will then remain available on RaiPlay: produced by Daimon Film in collaboration with Rai Documentaries and directed by Stefano SalvatiThe documentary film retraces theentire career Of Riccardo Cocciantegive it debuts to date, with contributions from (among others) Laura Pausini (in 2006 he reinterpreted his “I sing”originally engraved by Cocciante in 1979for the best-selling covers album of the same name 2 million copies worldwide and that in its Spanish version, “Yo I sing”; in 2007 he won the Latin Grammy Award as “Best Female Pop Album”), Gianna Nannini, Elodie And Achille Lauro (last year they sang that one in Sanremo “Hand by hand” written by Cocciante in 1978 and brought to success by Rino Gaetano), Mogul (co-author of hits such as “Heavenly nostalgia”, “A new friend”, “Deer in spring”, “A question of feeling”, “If we are together”), Fiorella Mannoia.
We saw the documentary, the review is below.
“I didn’t choose this life, it’s the song that chose me” – says the protagonist at the beginning; and the presence on stage of Cocciante, who essentially talks about himself to an interlocutor, is the underlying theme of the documentary, shot indoors for the spoken parts and outdoors (the Arcimboldi Theater in Milan, the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, the Arena in Verona) for the played ones.
Everything is integrated, as is obligatory in productions of this genre, by a series of tribute contributions from colleagues and collaborators (Massimo Ranieri, Ron, Gianna Nannini, Laura Pausini, Mogol, Luca Barbarossa, Fiorella Mannoia, Massimiliano Pani, Marco Masini, Gigi D’Alessio, Paola Turci, Elodie, Clemente Zard, Francesca Michielin, Elahida Dani, Mara Venier, and perhaps I’m forgetting some), all, obviously, largely laudatory.
The narrative starts from Cocciante’s birth, which took place in Saigon on 20 February 1946, and follows his childhood, adolescence and youth making extensive use of video reconstructions created with artificial intelligence, in which Riccardo is “replaced” by an avatar of his who was first a child, then an adolescent, then a young adult. The effect for the viewer is rather alienating: he is aware that “that” is not “really” Cocciante, yet he is induced to suspend his disbelief. Overall everything appears quite artificial, a sensation that diminishes as authentic vintage films can replace the AI reconstructions, some created from “animated” photographic images. Sometimes it borders on excess, as in the sequence of a discussion had by a superstitious Ennio Morricone with a chorister who showed up in the studio dressed in purple: it all has a bit of a cartoon feel to it, that’s it. There is also a sequence from a video, again the result of AI, of “Questione di feeling”, the Mina-Cocciante duet, with a pseudoMina from behind.
Overall, the documentary film is quite pleasant, once the protagonist has a certain excess of self-esteem; who concludes his interventions with an agreeable “perhaps I exist after so many years because I have never been in fashion”. That’s not entirely true, but that’s okay.
