Country Life à la Carte in Pupi Avati’s The Story of Boys and Girls

The nostalgia for rustic life in the countryside that is suggestively portrayed in the commercials produced by Mulino bianco, the prominent Italian company best known for its breakfast products, is one of the most fascinating topics addressed in John Dickie’s Delizia: The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food. In his volume, the historian discusses how, starting in the late 1980s, the company’s episodic advertisements often focused on family life at the kitchen table and portrayed the modern Italian family’s abandonment of urban life in favor of a healthier lifestyle. For Dickie, Mulino bianco’s snapshots of pastoral life weave a powerful myth around the dream of a rural home or vacation farmhouse for millions of Italian urban consumers (2).The idyllic landscape evoked in the commercials has been effective enough to draw Italian tourists to the small Tuscan town of Chiusdino in search of the original mulino bianco, the literal ‘white mill’ where the advertisements were initially shot (Dickie 3).

Pupi Avati’s 1989 film, The Story of Boys and Girls (Storia di ragazzi e di ragazze), released during this time period, draws viewers into a similarly bucolic setting that begs a comparison between the glorified traditions of the Italian past and the rapid cultural changes which took place in the Fascist era. Set in the 1930s in the countryside of the northern Italian region of Emilia Romagna (the same region in which Mulino bianco’s headquarters would eventually be located), the film takes place during a period in which Mussolini’s regime attempted to control the perceptions of its citizens and persuade them of the desirability of a simple country lifestyle. The Fascist cultural movement known as Strapaese (super-country), concentrated mainly in Tuscany and Emilia Romagna, praised citizens of the countryside for their larger families and provincial, genuine values, while accusing the urban bourgeoisie of being driven by egotism and of causing a drop in birthrates that threatened the nation’s well-being. In this context, Avati’s film makes use of the twofold meaning of the Italian word storia, as signifying both ‘story’ and ‘history,’ to offer a universal, almost allegorical account of two Italian families of diverse social classes that come together to celebrate the engagement of Angelo and Silvia.

The Story of Boys and Girls particularly highlights the Strapaese sentiment of Italian Fascism that scorned cosmopolitanism while associating the nation’s moral health with a more simple, rustic lifestyle. The engagement of the young protagonists serves as the pretext for comparing Silvia’s working-class family to Angelo’s much wealthier, urban family. As Angelo’s family leaves behind their upscale apartment in the city and travels to the countryside, they also unwittingly move towards regaining a sense of true Italian identity and kinship.¹ The film’s rural setting underscores the failure of Angelo’s family to correspond to Fascist ideals, and presents the independent, childless women of the upper class as the foils of the consummate Italian female. The integral scene of the engagement dinner explicitly reveals the metonymical relationship between the meal itself and the landscape and society that provided its basic elements. As a symbol of the work ethic required to nourish and maintain the ideals of family life, food becomes the palliative element that rehabilitates the cultural waywardness of Angelo’s family. While taking for granted Fascism’s gender roles, ideals of tradition, and exaltation of Italy’s provincial roots, Avati’s film unfolds in a series of comic near-disasters while also providing a patently ironic social commentary.

To begin with, Silvia’s family prepares an abundant and varied banquet in order to welcome Angelo’s family and impress them, yet the ability of a lower class rural family, such as that of Silvia, to host such an extravagant feast is entirely unrealistic. As Dickie and other scholars have noted, peasant eating habits were such that a rich banquet like that served by Silvia’s family would not have been accessible in the countryside. Rural masses of the time had very...