Fireworks expresses

7 Jan 2024 -

The Italian movie Fireworks tells the tragic story of two young gay men who find each other but don’t live to enjoy it. Set in 1981 Sicily, it’s about Gianni, a cute garage mechanic, who is taunted for being gay. No one in his life is much help. One of his tormentors seems to be gay himself, or at very least enjoys getting blow jobs from the kid. Gianni meets Nino, another cute guy, when they collide in a meet-cute bike accident. It turns out Nino’s father sets off fireworks for a living, hence the movie’s title. One night, the kissing starts, but someone sees them which leads to much gossip and hairy eyeballs. 

Fireworks is long, detailed and leisurely paced, seizing on period details and doing its best to capture that remarkable quality of Mediterranean sunlight, and it is filled with hot guys and pretty colours. The whole thing takes place in the year when Italy wins the World Cup so there are lots of scenes of the guys watching the game on crappy old TVs. And of course there are lots of fireworks scenes. “Fireworks can express anything,” Gianni tells his dubious mom. 

Based on a true story, one so sensational that it led to the birth of Italy’s gay rights movement, Fireworks is a sad movie of a story that needed to be told.