Sole (2003)

We start with four lads enthusiastically jerking off whilst thinking about their favourite girl from school! Then they accidentally discover a woman dancing. She tells them to get lost, but it's not long before their confidence returns and they are soon back trying to get her attention. That's when they notice that she has a visitor to her ramshackle riverside home, and they decide to go watch their antics. After much deliberation, one of them (Gianluca Izzo) decides to go tell her (Enrietta Fontana) how beautiful she is and to serenade her with a rather tone deaf song and dance routine. Unfortunately for him, his friends won't leave him alone for long enough to make an impression, even if he is far too young for her, and again she sends him packing. His pals tease him, he didn't try hard enough! Then they sneak into her house trash it, despite the protestations of the young man whom they leave to face her fury when she returns to her up smashed property. He's bereft and now shuns his friends. Might this be his first experience of "love" ? Might it cost him the friendship of his pals? Might it also cost him his much loved ghetto blaster? It's a lively and quite innovative take on the traditional coming of age story that mixes the innocent and the slightly more perfunctory quite successfully for a low-budget twenty minute drama. The young Izzo is a natural for the camera and it's got more substance to a story of choices and infatuation than many I've seen. Worth a watch.