‘I Hate Christmas’: The Sobering Netflix Series About ‘What Is Our Place in the World?’

A nurse who can’t find love, a sentimental balance. A waitress who, at thirty, is still a virgin. A man confined to a wheelchair after an accident, but full of will to live, and to seek the best for himself and for others: he has made disability his strong point. And many other characters, in a sort of “Love Actually” Italian style – and not surprisingly, “Love Actually” is the protagonist’s favorite film. Is called “I hate Christmas“. She is a series, on Netflix from December 7. And one might think: here’s another of the thousand thousand Christmas products, with romance and comedy, and maybe even with the usual protagonists. And yet it is something different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLMJ4QVU_nk

The series – six 30-minute episodes, all available on the streaming platform – is the Italian adaptation of the Norwegian series “Christmas with a stranger” di Per-Olav Sørensen (“Home for Christmas“, 2019-20, 2 seasons on Netflix). The protagonists of the Italian version are Pilar Fogliati, Beatrice Arnera, Fiorenza Pieri, Marco Rossetti, Nicolas Maupas. The production company is Luca and Matilde Bernabei’s Lux Vide, the same production company that made “Don Matteo“. One of the most prolific production companies in the field of Italian serials – and not by chance, here too, Luca and Matilde are the children of Ettore Bernabei, the legendary director of Rai’s “black and white” TV dramas. But here, after years of priests, nuns and doctors all in one piece, Lux Vide is also trying to explore new territories. Nothing particularly outrageous: but there are some physical love scenesand also a lesbian kiss. The main story is that of Gianna – Pilar Fogliati – a thirty-year-old who thinks that Christmas asks her, with more insistence every year, to make a balance sheet of his life. She has a job she likes, three precious friends she can count on. But at Christmas it seems that they are all happy, all in pairs. However, she is single. So, she decides to find a boyfriend to take home on Christmas Eve dinner. It will be 24 days of blind dates, disastrous encounters and nights of crying to find him… In the end, perhaps the most important discovery is that it is not necessary to find a partner: it is necessary to find yourself, to accept yourself.

“We decided to make an inclusive series that spoke of everyone”, says the screenwriter, Elena Bucaccio – assisted, in writing, by two other women: Viola Rispoli and Silvia Leuzzi. “The Natale it’s like a magnifying glass that puts you in front of yourself. This series tells the interior conflict between how we are and how others see us”, explains the head writer. “Eight billion people ask themselves at Christmas: ‘Who am I? What am I doing?’”, says Pilar Fogliati, the protagonist. “The message of the series is: Will I be able to find my place in the world? But the answer is that everyone is what they are, and they will find their way in their own time and ways”. Gianna, in the series, looks towards the viewer. She confides in those who look at her, as if she were a friend of hers. She confesses her fears, her thoughts, her mistakes, her hesitations. And this is perhaps the most interesting feature of the series. They call her “breaking the fourth wall”, those good of her. Marco Rossetti plays Carlo, one of Gianna’s suitors. Following an accident, he finds himself in a wheelchair. But he reacts by trying to find the best in life for himself and for others. “Carlo made his disability a strength,” says his interpreter.

The series was filmed in Chioggialocation not too exploited by the cinema – in 2011 the excellent “I am there” by Andrea Segre, then fiction “We Are Who We Are” by Luca Guadagnino, with Chloe Sevigny. In the original series, it was filmed in Røros, a small town in Norway in the county of Trøndelag, which is the set of the series “Pippi Longstocking”. In the Italian series this “small Venezia“, less touristy, equally crossed by canals and dominated by a poignant melancholy. Between Ponte Vigo and Palazzo Ravagnan, between Fondamenta Canal Vena and old cafes, Gianna’s bike rides take place, her meetings with her friends, the most iconic scenes of the series. The directors of the series are Davide Mardegan and Clemente De Muro, in their first experience in a TV series, after many experiences in advertising. And of course, they expect the results of plays – for the moment the series is in the top 10 of Netflix – but it is not at all improbable that, as in the Scandinavian original, the green light will be given for a second season.