Seven million and 800 thousand euros and 1.2 million theatergoers. These are the numbers for The Boy with the Pink Pants as of December 9, 2024, the date that consecrates the film directed by Margherita Ferri as the highest grossing film of the year for an Italian opera, even surpassing Parthenope, itself an exceptional result for Paolo Sorrentino at his best box office ever. And to think that this huge success, which no one would have predicted would happen, had started in the worst possible way.

Presented as a preview in the context of the Rome Film Festival 2024, within the independent section of Alice in the City and in front of an almost predominantly school audience, the screening of the film was in fact tainted with an ignoble scenario. As reported by Federico Boni on Gay.it, the story that traces the sad events linked to the suicide of the just fifteen-year-old Andrea Spezzacatena was welcomed by some of the students in the room with whistles, insults and mockery.

It is shocking to see all this in the light of a work that comments on and questions exactly the type of behavior that led the young Chainbreaker to commit the extreme act on November 20, 2012, after being the victim of homophobic bullying and cyberbullying due to his alleged homosexuality. On that occasion, indignation arose which even led to the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara being moved, who asked the regional school office to identify those responsible in order to “meet them and look them in the eye”.

The case then ended with the self-report of the students involved, but not before also intersecting with the suspension of a screening dedicated to a middle school class in Treviso, following doubts expressed by the parents’ council regarding the suitability of the delicate topics covered. Then the about-face and confirmation of the screening, in the wake of the national previews on November 4th dedicated to schools throughout Italy which gave rise to the incredible results that The Boy with the Pink Pants continues to achieve a month later.

The Boy with the Pink Pants, a film to heal the wounds of bullying

Educate in sensitivity

All signs, from the very high takings to the gestures of insensitivity, confusion and uncertainty, which only confirm how the film starring Samuele Carrino, who plays Andrea, and Claudia Pandolfi, in the role of mother Teresa Manes who wrote the book from which Roberto Proia took the screenplay and evidently hit the mark. Or at least a veil has been lifted on the lack of adequate education regarding respect for others and, even before that, the recognition of the identity sensitivities of others.

But there is only a confused shadow of concrete bills that look at the introduction of affective education and discussion in schools. Just over a month ago, the appeal, again addressed to Minister Valditara, was made by the family members of Leonardo Calcina, another fifteen-year-old who took his own life on 13 October 2024 in Montignano di Senigallia following repeated acts of bullying at school. Yet another case that underlines the urgency of discussing a phenomenon that exists and is amplified by the unregulated and improper use of social networks – that of Spezzacatena was the first case of suicide of a minor related to cyberbullying.

It goes without saying that the magnitude of the issue addressed by The Boy with the Pink Pants also intercepts, not so tangentially, the very serious unresolved problems that our society has in discussing the aspects linked to the distortions of relationships with the opposite sex. The underlying cultural poisoning is the same. In short, it does not seem out of focus to read in the results of Ferri’s work an echo of the collective attention reserved for a crime case such as that of the feminicide of the twenty-two-year-old Giulia Cecchettin, for which he was convicted in first instance of being killed on 5 December last her ex-boyfriend Filippo Turetta, her peer, was sentenced to life in prison.

The boy with pink trousers, the true story of Andrea Spezzacatena

School as a laboratory of respect and critical thinking

And the point of contact is still there, in school plans that place dealing with interpersonal relationships as central. A year ago, following the assassination of Cecchettin and the large waves of demonstrations that swept through Italy, Valditara had also spoken of activating the ‘Educating about relationships’ project. To date, however, it has stopped, mired somewhere in the fears of the government majority regarding the infiltration of ‘gender theory’, whatever that means.

What’s more the joke: on the occasion of the presentation of the Cecchettin Foundation by his father Gino on 18 November 2024 to the Chamber of Deputies, Valditara pontificated in a confused manner on “don’t pretend not to see that the increase in sexual violence phenomena is also linked to forms of marginality and deviance in some way descending from illegal immigration”, moving the center of the discussion after having labeled the fight against patriarchy as an “ideological vision”. However, the meeting between the two is very recent, with the signing of a protocol between the foundation and the ministry with the aim of “identifying common actions”.

What sums all this up? A great urgency. A need to realign the directions of dialogue, to bring them into the places of formation of respect and critical thinking that schools should be. Today more than yesterday. To then look the problems in the face for what they are and the need not to hide behind empty and demagogic nuances.

A film that could have dared more

So we always welcome cases of strong debate as The Boy with the Pink Pants has been and will certainly continue to be. A film with soft, shrewd and partly heartfelt tones, which takes inspiration from the teen drama genre but perhaps remains a little shy about delineating the real complexity underlying that electric cloud that is adolescence. In particular if investigated in the face of a discovery of the self threatened by ignorance and cruelty as happens in the film, which perhaps could have dared a little more in seeking greater nuances and a little less clear distinction between good and bad.

Ferri’s is a film that probably partly suffers from the search for an immediate reading, effective for a generalist audience and as transversal as possible. But in this it is then undeniable that it remains a work that has its fundamental artistic value in loudly generating the demand for a new sensitivity.