In 2011, Alberto De Michele introduced us to Los lobos in his short film of the same name. At that time, these mature robbers operating in foggy nights, appeared among shadows in a mise-en-scene that tended to the abstract in the formal. Darkness, masks, voice-over and black roads surrounded them, just like in their hits. Evolution and at the same time counterpart of that work, for this feature film De Michele talks to us, 11 years later, about his last big hit. This time, however, he films them in the open, focusing his attention on the more human details of the heist, on the waiting, the phone calls, the car rides with a son who wants to follow in “your fucking footsteps”. If I lupi felt and looked like the moment of the crime outside the real world, now we are in those empty hours where life really happens.
Of course, in this “last ride” of the wolves there are narrative twists, mistrust among team members and various betrayals to color the planning and execution of the plan, nothing less than stealing a van with 12 million euros. However, these classic heist movie tropes are diluted in a demystification of the mystical air that pervaded the short film. The result is an intriguing and original formal and narrative approach to a well-known crime story, a work that we can classify as fiction, non-fiction, mockumentary or all of the above. Have you ever wondered what Ocean's Eleven directed by Abbas Kiarostami would be like? RAFAEL S. CASADEMONT