Strategies and Outputs of the "Plan B". Agency in the Italian Contemporary Cinema

Abstract

The article aims to analyse a thematic aspect of contemporary Italian cinema from Smetto quando voglio (2014) to The Place (2017): several films of the last years present characters who decide to restart their own lives, with which they are dissatisfied, by effecting an existential and professional Plan B (a very meaningful film in this perspective is Che vuoi che sia, 2016). The study is based on a methodological framework, which is focused on the concept of agency, the human ability to conceive an objective and to reach it through action. From the canon of the movies taken into consideration, fanciful or impossible projects, left to the improvisation, emerge. Due to this, these intentions and experiences turn out to be in itself negative, besides the fact that they come to touch crime and result therefore dangerous and self-defeating for the same promoting subjects.