Today I will talk about the movie "Vito and the Others", "Vito e gli altri" in its original Italian title. Like Acla, it is not a film for a popcorn-evening in front of the television. "Vito and the Others" is a very strange movie, making it hard for me to describe.

Let's have a look at the plot: generally spoken, it is about childlike street gangs in poverty-stricken Naples, Italy. Vito is a 12 y/o boy whose father just shot his wife and daughter. For reasons we don't know, Vito is left alive. At the back of the VHS-cover it says that he convinces his father to spare his life and call the police. Maybe the author read the book (if there is any) - we don't see this in the film. Vito now lives at relatives, we don't get to know anything about them. He becomes member of a street gang, getting involved in petty crimes like stealing old women's handbags. Finally he gets caught and is put away in a closed institution for troubled youth where he is raped by his inmates. Set free again, he becomes even worse and finally ends up killing a person...

What is so strange about this film?
There is no logical plot like we are used to. You can best describe it as a sequence of pictures, similar to a slide show. It is the kind of film where you say to yourself: "I hope, at least the filmmakers themselves understood their work". Examples: time and again we see one of the street gang's members sitting on a chair in the middle of a road, telling us how he/she sees the world. Time and again there are TV commercials faded in (without English subtitles). Time and again there is no sound. Time and again we see the kids playing video games (Shoot 'em up and car racing).
The film lives from insinuations.