ME LET’S HOPE I MAKE IT

Lina Wertmuller, who established her reputation with a number of ground-breaking films in the 1970s, returns with a compassionate and winsome tale of a middle-aged teacher who, as a result of bureaucratic foul-up, is sent to the wrong school in Naples. He soon realizes that most of this absentee students are working the streets. The children themselves are Dickensian in their poverty and cunning-some deal in cigarettes on the black market, others much care for their alcoholic parents and keep thier families together through resourcefulness. By cajoling, persuading and haranguring the waifs, Marco mananges to get them into class, exposing them to the riches of Dante and geography, knowlege hitherto denied them. But they are a rough and unruly bunch. A firm believer in non-violence, when he strikes a child in a moment of irrational anger, he suffers a crisis of conscience. This incident and those that follow compromise the many poignant and often hearttrending moments of ME LET'S HOPE I MAKE IT. – Toronto Film Festival. In Italian with English subtitles.