FILM OF THE WEEK: The Last One for the Road - Reviewed by Roe McDermott

“You discovered a great truth about the world, but you forgot it?” asks one character. “Yes.” “The world or your world?” “What’s the difference?”

It is the kind of exchange that seems to arrive out of nowhere in Francesco Sossai’s The Last One for the Road, tossed into the air between drinks before drifting away again, unresolved. Yet it captures the film’s philosophy: truth is elusive, memory is unreliable, and lives are built as much from half-remembered conversations and missed opportunities as from the events themselves.

Set in the present day but photographed as though time stalled somewhere around 1981, The Last One for the Road inhabits a strangely suspended Italy. There are mobile phones and motorways, but also weathered bars, forgotten villages and landscapes that feel untouched by decades of progress. Sossai and cinematographer Massimiliano Kuveiller have an extraordinary eye for place, lingering on architecture, empty roads and negative space with the patience of someone who understands that locations hold memories just as powerfully as people. An orange blossom climbing a concrete wall, a narrow alleyway, a faded provincial bar filled with line-dancers, or the geometry of a modernist building all become moments of beauty, stillness and connection.

That attentiveness extends to the film's rhythm. This is a loose, shaggy road movie, one that ambles rather than races, allowing conversations to wander into philosophy, economics, forgotten dogs or youthful regrets before dissolving again. Its elliptical use of memory is especially beautiful, with the past bleeding gently into the present without fanfare or explanation. Rather than tidy flashbacks, memories arrive the way they often do in life - incomplete, emotionally charged and impossible to pin down.

At its centre are two ageing drifters, Carlo and Doriano, whose endless search for "one last drink" is both comic routine and melancholy ritual. Yet the film never reduces them to lovable rogues or cautionary tales. Their greatest achievement lies instead in the unexpected relationship they develop with Giulio, a shy architecture student who gradually abandons his carefully planned evening to follow them into uncertainty. What emerges is an unusual and tender portrait of intergenerational friendship, where wisdom is passed on accidentally, by men who barely realise they possess any.

There is remarkably little plot to speak of, and Sossai seems entirely unconcerned by that. Instead, he builds a film around atmosphere, companionship and the fragile ways people briefly become important to one another. Its gentleness is disarming. Beneath the aimlessness lies a quiet meditation on ageing, remembering and the possibility that even lives that appear to have drifted off course can still leave lasting marks on someone else's future.

Directed by Francesco Sossai. Written by: Francesco Sossai, Adriano Candiago. Cinematography by Massimiliano Kuveiller. Edited by Paolo Cottignola. Music by Krano.
Starring Filippo Scotti, Sergio Romano, Pierpaolo Capovilla. 100 mins