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Vicini di casa
Movie

Vicini di casa

2022 • Unknown

Woke Score
4.2
out of 10

Plot

A couple receives an indecent proposal from their younger, more daring neighbors.

Overall Series Review

The film is an intimate Italian chamber comedy centered entirely on the sexual and emotional breakdown of a long-term, traditional marriage. The narrative uses a dinner party, and the younger neighbors' 'open-minded' lifestyle, as a catalyst to deconstruct the older couple's relationship. The plot focuses on the older couple's lack of intimacy and their hidden desires, which are juxtaposed against the neighbors' carefree and sexually liberated existence. This contrast serves to critique the repressive nature of traditional fidelity and marital structure, suggesting that sexual experimentation is a path to honesty or vitality. The entire conflict is psychological and domestic, with little to no focus on broader political or social themes like race or systemic oppression.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The film centers on four Italian characters of the same ethnic background, making the plot conflict purely interpersonal and sexual, not based on race or immutable characteristics. Casting is colorblind without political lecturing, with the conflict rooted in lifestyle and generation rather than intersectional hierarchy.

Oikophobia5/10

The traditional, long-married, and affluent couple, Giulio and Federica, are depicted as 'stagnant,' 'rigid,' and 'diffident' against the backdrop of their inherited Roman apartment. The institution of the middle-class, nuclear family is framed as a prison of boredom and unhappiness, which must be broken to achieve personal or sexual vitality, leaning toward the deconstruction of a core Western heritage institution.

Feminism7/10

The female protagonist, Federica, is shown to be stifled and unhappy by her marriage, with her husband Giulio being 'austere' and 'traditionalist'. The narrative explicitly highlights Federica’s admission of suppressed desire and curiosity toward the 'open' lifestyle, while the husband's focus is on reprimanding the neighbors for their noise potentially affecting their daughter. Motherhood and the family unit are presented as a constraint that must be discarded for the wife's personal fulfillment and sexual liberation.

LGBTQ+6/10

The plot's central conflict revolves around the proposal of partner-swapping between two heterosexual couples, promoting the idea of 'multi-body sex' and a non-normative structure for sexual fidelity. This champions a sexually fluid and non-traditional view of the marriage covenant. The presence of two lesbian neighbors, whose private life is spied upon, introduces alternative sexualities as an object of fascination that further highlights the main couple's sexual stagnation.

Anti-Theism1/10

The conflict is secular, psychological, and entirely focused on marital and sexual fulfillment. There is no mention of God, religion, or the Church, and no explicit vilification of Christian faith. The debate over morals remains purely subjective and interpersonal, with no reference to a transcendent or higher moral law.