A Small Southern Enterprise

Don Costantino has had enough. Guilt-ridden about having quit the priesthood, he’s now unemployed and homeless at 50 — but afraid to tell Mamma Stella, who has been on edge since daughter Rosa Maria left her husband Arturo. Mortified at the village scandal her children are causing, Mamma banishes Costantino – like Napoleon – to an island in the Mediterranean, where the family owns a crumbling lighthouse. But pop-eyed Costantino is simpatico from years of hearing people’s confessions, and soon castaways start floating up on his island exile. First comes a retired hooker, then brother-in-law Arturo (a frustrated jazz pianist), and some buoyant roofers in a circus caravan. Rosa Maria enters defiantly with her new lover, and even Mamma Stella herself washes in. The misfits are thus assembled like flotsam, the tide pushing them one way when they want to go another. But if everyone can leave society’s expectations behind, they just might be able to set up A SMALL SOUTHERN ENTERPRISE. (In Italian with subtitles) – B.B.