"Smart holidays". At table with Alberto Sordi

Italian filmography is rich in culinary quotes, great feasts, and scenes where food is king. A typical Italian trait or an obsession

Certainly the latter applies in the case of Remo and Augusta, aka Alberto Sordi and Anna Longhi, in the film "Dove vai in vacanza?" (“Where are you going on vacation?”), a 1978 movie directed by Mauro Bolognini, Luciano Salce and Alberto Sordi himself, divided into three independent episodes.

Sordi and Longhi, protagonists of the episode "Le vacanze intelligenti" (“Smart Holidays”), are depicted as hungry fruit sellers and overweight simpletons who think only about food, especially since the children - as the perfect nemesis of their parents - subject them to weight control and drastic diets designed by the son in medical school, "il dottorino" ("the young doctor").

And it is the children, sophisticated and cultured, who plan their "smart holidays". cultural itineraries, visits to museums, contemporary music concerts, all incomprehensible for the parents, and a strict diet.

The austere, intellectual program puts a strain on Remo and Augusta, who, as "revenge" end up in the emergency room to have their stomach pumped after binge eating.

Bucatini, sausage, tripe and finally «Du’ pappardelle al sugo de lepre, la fine der monno» (Pappardelle with hare sauce, the end of the world).

There is a hilarious scene at the 1978 Venice Biennial Exhibition, where Remo and Augusta are unable to understand the language and contemporary art forms, she stops to rest in a chair and is mistaken for a living art installation - "Chair with resting body"- that a tourist is willing to buy for 18,000 Italian Lira.

When the parents return home exhausted, they find a completely transformed apartment, furniture and personal objects scattered around, and the house occupied by their children's intellectual friends.
After conflicts and disagreements, the two generations reconcile in front of a huge plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce, this time something not even "the young doctor" is able to deny his parents, because "eating together reconciles ... even the most die-hard intellectuals."