One of my top ten movies of all time is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It still holds up 48 years after its' release. Crazy Life is sort of a step child of Milos Forman's masterpiece. While not as good as Jack Nicholson's best film, it is one of my favorite foreign films of the last ten years. Donatella and Beatrice are a couple of emotionally unstable women who meet at a mental hospital. They click on a shared level of being outcasts from normal society. The misfits team up for a really wild adventure. The actresses are tremendous, with a screen chemistry as good as I have ever seen. The script is both sad and funny, with a completely unpredictable story which kept me guessing from beginning to end. One slight drawback is the rapid fire dialogue here. If you do not speak Italian; and I don't, be prepared to speed read for two hours. Even with that, I highly recommend Crazy Life.

Whenever I review a foreign language film, I fully realize many people won't bother watching the picture because it's not in English. This is a shame, as many of the better films I have seen have been in a variety of languages and with "Like Crazy", you'd be missing a very good movie.The story begins in a psychiatric institution in Italy. Beatrice (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) is a patient, though she won't admit this to anyone…even herself. In her distorted mind, she is a countess… and the old mansion used as a hospital was donated by her to treat these unfortunate people! So, while at times Beatrice looks and seems very normal, she is severely deluded and self-absorbed. When a new resident arrives, Beatrice decides to make Donatella (Micaela Ramazzotti) her own personal project. After all, she is a rich, benevolent lady and helping the unfortunates is her life! So how, exactly, does she 'help'? Yep…she orchestrates an escape and soon the oddly matched pair are out on a joy ride…complete with stolen car.At this point in the movie, Paolo Virzi (who wrote and directed the picture) could have chosen to make the film a kooky comedy, like "Crazy People" or "The Couch Trip"…which is what you might expect with a Hollywood film. Fortunately, "Like Crazy" does not go there but manages to be rather poignant as well as realistic. You learn more about Beatrice and Donatella and their lives outside the institution but there are no magic solutions to their problems. After all, they are indeed very ill and mental illness isn't particularly funny…and is often quite tragic. Now this is not to say that ultimately this is a depressing or tragic film…and it manages to say quite a bit while still being believable and compelling.

I found this film by accident and did not regret a moment watching it. Depression is a maladies of our times. Of the modern society. As well as bipolar disorder, these are some illnesses that people frown upon or are reluctant to discuss. This movie depicts the effects of these diseases and shows more than one inconvenient truths. Balancing between the world of the ill and the real life, it shows how it is to live with a sickness like that and how little distance exists between these people and the ones that are considered healthy. The leading actors were breathtaking. Being able to act as a bipolar in such a way is not an easy task. This movie has lessons in store for everyone that is interested in seeing what these people go through. And as far as statistics go, you probably have some people in your midst that deal or have dealt with similar issues. This is not an easy movie. Don't get fooled by the "comedy" genre. It has some comic moments but it's mostly a punch in the stomach if you're up to the task of watching it.

I saw this at a film festival where it was very well received by an English speaking audience. As one of the lead characters talks almost non-stop and very fast I suspect the overall audience impact might be higher on Italian speakers. Certainly it is hard to keep up with the sub-titles at times. At the psychiatric care facility where the women live the daily cycle seems to be predictably noisy but largely routine until the two lead characters catch a bus away from their "work in the community" jobs at a nursery. Their usual transport is late and by catching a regular bus to the local shopping centre a series of escapades start snowballing around them. The "Beatrice" character is off her meds and seems to be having a manic blowout that leads her from one precarious situation to the next. The other character "Donatella" seems quite sober and somewhat surprised by their unauthorised leave of absence. As events unfold we learn more of both characters back story. Some sequences seem to be too coincidental to be true but most of the time the snowball of events keeps moving towards some moments of truth for each of the characters.Given that the film subject matter includes characters who are seen as crazy or mad by the system it is a real challenge to portray something of what that might be like from the centre of the storm - as it were.Mostly though the juxtapositions work and we learn something about friendships and maybe a few insights along the way.