Ignorance Is Bliss, from director Massimiliano Bruno, is a comedy about social media.
The story revolves around the conflict of Ernesto (Marco Giallini), an teacher who very much rejects the internet and prefers a good book to snapchat, and Fillipo (Alessandro Gassman), an old rival newly arrived at the school with an approach to education that involves using the internet to find your answers.
The tension between comes from their experience in an amateur theatre group as young men, in which they both fell in love with Marianna, who ultimately married Ernesto, then died in a crash shortly after Ernesto discovered their baby wasn’t his.
Years later, Marianna’s daughter turns up at the school, determined to have Ernesto adopt technology, and Fillipo abandon it, for the purpose of a documentary about human connection, inspired by her lack of a father figure.
Got all that? This isn’t the first time Giallini and Gassman have played rivals in a film, them having previously been in God Willing, which screened in the 2015 Italian Film Festival. This film feels like a conglomeration of newspaper cartoons about the young ‘uns and their technology, and feels a bit long winded. It gets bogged down in it’s own plot to the point where it has about four distinct times the film should have ended.
I’d give this film 2.5/5
