Unica by Ilary Blasi: is Netflix the new Verissimo?

Remember the scene of The sun of the future when the alter ego of Nanni Morettithe director Giovanni, to save his film on the communist events of 1956, agrees to discuss his project with the staff of a rich and powerful film and television platform, in short: Netflix? And remember the warning that the manager repeatedly addresses to him, which has become a kind of catchphrase: we distribute in 190 countries, 190 countries!. Here, forget everything and stay inside the “sacred GRA”, as Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary defined it, the great ring road that surrounds Rome. Only there does a product like this live Uniquethe story that Netflix has entrusted to Ilary Blasi to recall, from his point of view, the story of the great love with Francesco Totti finished with (signed) rags flying. Seeing it and struggling to contain laughter in the face of certain narrative naiveties (the long sequence of the search and discovery of the bags and shoes, complete with the blacksmith busy forcing the locks is almost sublime), one wonders what the mystery of this choice of Netflix. Even if the journalist who intervenes to comment here and there on Ilary’s story at a certain point shows us how the story has become also the subject of attention in the American press, I struggle to find in the docu-interview what was Netflix’s philosophy in the programmatic statements. There was talk, then, of one glocal line: absorb the landscape and cultural suggestions of the realities in which the filming takes place to build universal stories, usable with interest in every part of the world.

Well, I really don’t think that the events, the gossip, the allusions, the tears and the laughter, that matriarchy that surrounds Ilary (a matriarchy crowded with mothers, sisters, cousins ​​to make Giorgia Meloni’s one envious), can excite anyone other than beyond the Alps. Perhaps Netflix’s strategy has changed, focusing on less ambitious, less universal objectives and also on less innovative content, on a television not very different from what the generalist networks offer daily in their afternoon schedules such as very true? One of the most successful characters in the story confirms this to us, the taxi driver who chauffeurs Ilary through the streets of Rome and reveals to her that certain nuances of her relationship with a figure like Totti can only be grasped in their truth in Rome.

Other than glocalization, going to Milan is also forbidden, especially if you go there not only to work but also find time to have a coffee. In short, we are right in the deepest little Italy, with its best-known rites, “the Italy of waltzes and coffee” as De Gregori would say and the question that worried Riccardo del Turco many years ago, “but what did you put in the coffee?” now even Netflix does it.