‘Scontro di Civiltà per un Ascensore a Piazza Vittorio’

By Madeleine Wightman

This is a 2010 film release by Isotta Toso, originally based on a novel. Algerian author Amara Lakhous (now an Italian resident) is the author of this satire of an immigrant's life in Italy.

The story explores the murder of a young man in the elevator of an apartment building adjacent to Piazza Vittorio to show the hidden (and not-so-hidden) prejudices of Roman residents toward "outsiders." The victim, Lorenzo Manfredini, a young hood also known as the Gladiator, had repeatedly defaced and urinated in the building's elevator, earning the enmity of every resident. As residents and local merchants tell their stories to a police inspector, their hidden agendas and casual resentments against immigrants surface.

Amedeo, a resident uniformly admired by everyone, thought to be an Italian volunteer who helps immigrants deal with Roman bureaucracy, is sought for the crime. No one has seen him since the murder.

Lakhous shapes his story around this single apartment building on Piazza Vittorio in Rome, an immigrant area. His building residents, whose stories crisscross, offer a microcosm of modern Rome as they battle over the deteriorating condition of their elevator.

He cleverly creates twelve unique voices as each person tells "the truth according to...", alternating these separate voices with "wails" from Amadeo as he comments on what the residents say.

Amedeo, who speaks Italian like a native, provides a running commentary on Roman life, pointing up the contrasts between what people say to other Italians and what they say and do about their immigrant neighbours behind their backs.

As each person provides additional information about Amedeo and the victim, the reader comes to know characters like Parviz Mansoor Samadi, who has barely escaped from Iran, leaving his wife and four children; Benedetta Esposito, "the oldest concierge in Rome," a Neapolitan whose suspicions of all immigrants is determined by their behaviour with regard to the temperamental elevator; and Iqbal Amir Allah, from Bangladesh, whose observations about Amedeo's understanding of Muslim customs lead him to say that "Signor Amedeo is as good as mango juice."

The owner of a local bar, a neighbourhood fish seller, and the police inspector also give their impressions of Amedeo, the building residents, and immigrants in general.

The characters' gradual revelations and Amedeo's commentary change the reader's perceptions, and as the plot becomes more complex, the story matches the sympathies one develops for the immigrants with the understanding one evolves for those who resent the immigrants' perceived privileges.

Often hilarious, the story carries an edge and though the author is not heavy-handed with his satire, his points are obvious (and repeated) as each character reveals prejudices and reactions to prejudice.

The conclusion takes on a somewhat different tone and style as police inspector Mauro Bettarini, believing that "truth is like a coin: it has two faces," gives two different possibilities to explain the murder.

Rounding out Lakhous’ neighbourhood—all these characters get to narrate in separate chapters——are such finely drawn figures as Iqbal Amir Allah, a grocer from Bangladesh whom Benedetta insists is Pakistani (we like him despite his remark that in Italy “Massimo, Giulio and Romano are all first names”); Sandro Dandini, owner of the piazza’s main bar; Inspector Bettarini; and Maria Cristina Gonzalez, an overweight Peruvian maid abused by Lorenzo.

One resident of the building links all these characters: Signor Amedeo, Lakhous’ most appealing character, a translator and intellectual who reads abstruse authors such as the Romanian aphorist E.M. Cioran. The others, who largely disdain one another, like Amedeo.

Most assume he’s Italian because of his fluency, fine manners, Italian wife, and aristocratic gait. But when police find “The Gladiator” murdered in the building’s elevator, then name Amedeo as the chief suspect, his own immigrant identity comes to the fore.

Elisabetta Fabiani, addicted to thrillers, also frets that her dog, Valentino, has disappeared into dishes served by Chinese restaurants popping up everywhere in the neighbourhood. Parviz Mansoor Samadi, an Iranian cook forced to flee Shiraz by the Revolutionary Guards, refuses to learn Italian cooking (he hates pizza and pasta) and so finds himself bounced into dishwashing jobs and further indignities.

Benedetta Esposito, the building’s concierge from Naples, hates immigrants and constantly calls Parviz “the Albanian”—and much worse. Antonio Marini, a Milanese professor who moved to Rome to take a professorship at La Sapienza, feels he has survived a Third World country and believes the unification of Italy was an “irreparable historical mistake”—one perspective the Milanese sometimes bring to Rome.

Lakhous orchestrates ’Scontro di Civiltà’ as a small symphony of telling voices, with the winds predictably winning pride of place.

We hear voices of racism (Lorenzo’s “Italy for Italians! Italy for Italians!”), exasperation (Benedetta’s “Living with them is impossible!”), and even outrage from the new immigrants themselves (Iqbal laments, “Why can’t the police be strict with immigrants who are criminals? Why should the honest ones who sweat for a piece of bread suffer?”).

Since Lakhous favours a lively, reportorial style, it would be easy to let the slapstick moments of ’Scontro di Civiltà’ obscure its fundamental seriousness as a photo of a society in transition.

To his credit, the author understands “reflex racism”—the shabby thoughts of non-evil people who mouth observations their wiser selves might reject.

So Elisabetta, arguing that dogs should be protected before immigrants, asks, “Have you ever heard of a dog who raped its owner?”

By doing so, Lakhous maintains an even-handed angle on his characters that helps them rise lifelike from the page.

Iqbal, one example of that, recalls that Amedeo once shared with him the Prophet Muhammad’s thought that “to smile at someone is like giving alms.” Lakhous’ kindly gaze at his cast in ’Scontro di Civiltà’ perhaps is his way of noting that battling outsiders have defined Italy since the beginning of time, and those clashes made Italy Italian.