This Italian oddity is among the most notorious grindhouse productions due solely to its final ten minutes. This is to say that TO BE TWENTY (AVERE VENT’ANNI; 1978) begins as a seemingly routine sexploitation potboiler that gradually reveals itself to have definite political concerns (with the major hot button issues of the day, communism and feminism in particular, picked over quite blatantly), only to end up in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT territory. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the film was a commercial flop but has since been rediscovered by cultists.
We’ve got two young runaways, Lia and Tina. Finding themselves “young, hot and pissed off,” this deadly duo gets together at a beach party and Hitchhikes to Rome. What follows is a highly meandering and picturesque odyssey, with the two stealing food, scamming cigarettes and bedding down in a commune, together with a mystically inclined weirdo with a painted white face–a guy who, like most of the men in the commune, is impotent. Finding no outlet for their horniness the gals decide to have sex with each other, in full view of the weird white faced guy.
Following a carefree dance through the streets of Rome (evidently filmed verite style, judging by the bemused expressions of the onlookers) Lia and Tina run into a pretentious filmmaker and take part in his documentary. They also manage to find some guys to bang, and all seems well in the commune—at least until cops turn up and arrest everyone.
This leaves L&T on their own once again. After teasing some guys in a restaurant they elect to take a walk in the woods, where the film’s fearsome reputation is finally made clear…
TO BE TWENTY’S initial US release (contained on the Raro Video double disc DVD) excised the gruesome ending and lesbian sex scene, resulting in a radically different, and far less resonant, work. Not that the film in its preferred cut is any kind of masterpiece.
Outside the audacious genre mixing I found it dull, with eroticism that’s pretty limp (and not helped at all by the horrendous 1970s Italian pop tunes that fill the soundtrack) and two deeply obnoxious (if extremely photogenic) leads, played by the popular Italian comedy actresses Gloria Guida and the late Lilli Carati—neither of whom had much of a career in the years following this film.
The brutality of the final scenes is undeniably impacting, yet it also feels gratuitous. Even in the unforgiving universe of 1970s grindhouse cinema the horrific punishments meted out to TO BE TWENTY’S heroines seem out of place. Many commentators have made claims of a feminist sentiment on the part of director Fernando Di Leo, alleging he was making some kind of statement about male insecurity. To me his intentions seemed more in line with the type of puritanical finger wagging of LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR, a novel/film whose overall narrative arc (in which a sexually adventurous woman meets her doom due to her promiscuity) was very similar to that of this one.
Vital Statistics
TO BE TWENTY (AVERE VENT’ANNI)
International Daunia Film
Director: Fernando Di Leo
Producer: Vittorio Squillante
Screenplay: Fernando Di Leo
Cinematography: Roberto Gerardi
Editing: Amedeo Giomini
Cast: Gloria Guida, Lilli Carati, Vittorio Caprioli, Ray Lovelock, Leopoldo Mastelloni, Giorgio Bracard