Strange Stories (Strane Storie)

Running time: N/A

Like a weird Kafka-esque dream comes the Strange Stories of a tale-telling father. On board a train, a young girl requests that her father tell her some of his unique and entertaining stories to help take away the "hum-drum" of looking at the world pass by the window. Like all good fathers, he obliges by making up weird and ridiculous stories on the spot, turning the other train passengers into his fictitious world's characters. In the first story, a man has his air cut off for not paying his bill. The second tells of a woman who purchases a man in a store, and after finding he is expired goods, returns him. The third concoction tells of a staring match between two families, one wealthy, one not. The contest escalates into full scale war. The fourth and final tale involves all of the passengers in their train compartment as they argue over whether such bizarre stories could actually happen. They are led to realize that they are living the strangest story of all and set out on foot from the bombed out carriage of the train, abandoned in a barren field littered with Coca-Cola cans and condoms. Director Sandro Baldoni's dreamlike world creates an allegory for modern life, as it brilliantly intertwines images of the present and future. Baldoni describes his film as a "film about stupidity that pokes fun at the absurd and disturbing side of reality." Succeeding in this endeavor, Baldoni has created a world filled with wild imagination and obtuse creativity, and one should not miss it. -- Mike Rabehl