It doesn’t take long to work out where you are in The Last One for the Road––for the backroads of Veneto, Italy, Francesco Sossai’s delightful new movie has the unmistakable specificity of a life spent there. What you instead start to wonder is the when of it all. The protagonists are a pair of rogues in their 50s––one of whom, Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla), wears a shirt the color of a tobacco stain, the other, Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano), a style of bushy mustache I’ve rarely seen onscreen since Bruno Ganz sported a similar one in The American Friend. Only after stumbling into a group of Gen Z students––the most visible dressed in the headgear of an Egyptian goddess––late at night along a Venice canal do we realize that our heroes exist in the here and now. If it wasn’t for their innate knack for catching last orders, regardless of the watering hole, you’d almost call them men out of time.
If that clash of alcohol and anachronism brings another filmmaker to mind (as it did for a number of critics in Cannes), it’s probably Aki Kaurismäki—a director whose characters could easily exist on Doriano and Carlobianchi’s cosmic plane. The comp feels particularly fitting in Sossai’s opening exchanges––the bars are heavy with Americana, much of the music comes courtesy of a jangly live guitar––but there’s a notable shift in tone with the arrival of Giulio (Filippo Scotti, who played Sorrentino’s analogue in Hand of God), a lovelorn architecture student who watches his potential crush slip through the doorway of a bathroom stall. Eyeing a rare chance to pass on some wisdom, Doriano and Carlobianchi extend a collective wing.
In another film, this set-up could suggest a learning experience for all three of them. But Sossai’s movie (which is certainly not without sentiment) definitely follows through on the promise of its title. It might slip into Alexander Payne territory at times––there are a few moments when the trio drive in contented silence––yet if Last One is Sossai’s Sideways, it’s a version with two Jacks and no Miles. Across the 100-minute runtime, our guides wet their beaks on beer, grappa, something called a “laced coffee,” and, much to Doriano’s delight, a freshly shaken daiquiri. That last one is mixed in a crumbling manner by a man who mistakes them for land surveyors and, after a round of cocktails and a little make-out session upstairs, even offers to pay their travel expenses. After a number of these kinds of misadventures, the buttoned-up Giulio starts letting off some steam.
It’s around this time that one’s reminded of another Italian influence. Indeed, whenever a character like the cocktail man introduces themselves as a Baron, fans of Alice Rohrwacher should sit up and take notice. Since The Wonders, we’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a steady stream of cinematic fables from Italy’s rural enclaves––each shot on grainy film and boasting an enchanting mix of decadent gentry, old wives’ tales, and local myths. If, like me, you’ve yet to grow tired of this stuff, you’ll probably also enjoy Sossai’s opening sequence, which is shot from the POV of a helicopter window as it lands in a village circa the 1990s, evoking both a visiting monarch and a UFO, and in a way that recalls a similar moment in Rohrwacher’s masterpiece Happy as Lazzaro.
In Sossai’s film, the helicopter comes bearing the gift of a Rolex for the longest-serving employee of a local factory. This fateful day, which has since entered village lore, happens adjacent to another subplot involving Doriano and Carlobianchi, some ill-begotten money, a treasure map, and the 2008 financial crisis––a world event during which the two lost it all and seemingly never recovered, hence the amiable boozing and codependency. As the film stumbles slightly towards its conclusion, just about getting the key in the door, these tried and trusted MacGuffins suggest one kind of conclusion. That Sossai goes for another, and coolly sticks the landing, is one of many reasons he’s worth keeping an eye on.
The Last One for the Road screened at Thessaloniki International Film Festival and will be released by Music Box Films in 2026.