Il paramedico (1982)

This is another "In Italian without subtitles", but you'll not only pick up on the basic plot, you'll enjoy it tremendously: Il Paramedico is a very entertaining movie!

Enrico Montesano stars as Carlo, Il Paramedico - Edwige Fenech also stars (she also appears in Io E Caterina) as his bored wife - and, unless we're more confused than we thought, we're fairly certain "Paramedico" means something a little different in Italy than it does in America. Here, we associate a "paramedic" with ambulance medical care -- in this film, the character APPEARS to be something of a male nurse ... making rounds in an overcrowded hospital ward, for example, probably able to provide basic medical assistance, but possibly without a physician's training.

Describing the basic plot -- a paramedic whose life is changed when he falls madly in love with his brand new car and is mistaken for a terrorist -- doesn't even begin to touch upon the physical comedy in this movie that makes you burst out laughing ... (i.e., he spends half an hour carefully polishing specks off this new car with his shirt sleeve only to have a dog trot over and "christen" the glistening sidewalls; his wife's disinterest in sex inspires a passionate dream ... about her becoming a celibate nun; and after his arrest as a "terrorist", his family and neighbors rush to be on TV and reinterpret perfectly innocent incidents from his life in light of this new information) -- if you have any sense of humor at all, you'll enjoy this!

Midway through the movie, Carlo picks up a beautiful woman having car trouble and drives her home -- it turns out that she's married to -- or, more accurately, she's the ornamental attachment of - a very wealthy businessman -- Rossano's role, naturally! The state of their marriage is such that Rossano's character practically ADOPTS Carlo -- who he mistakenly thinks is a doctor, instead of a paramedic - on the spot as a way of keeping his wife occupied ... a proposition that thrills Carlo to no end, you can be sure ... but which backfires on the shocked Rossano when he learns Carlo is supposedly a terrorist. Another funny moment is when he insists his wife publicly denounce Carlo before HIS career is ruined -- her alternative is to lose her life of luxury! - leading to a funny scene of the promiscuous wife (stark naked in the previous scene) now in a demure, high-necked ruffled dress with a big bow insisting like a little girl in all wide-eyed astonishment that she'd been innocently duped by this bad man!

Watch carefully during the party scene! Carlo attends a party at Rossano's character's home and sits down next to another guest who doesn't say a word. We all yelled, "BLOSSSS-OMMMMM!" -- just like Rossano once did in Il Natale -- sure looked like the same actor. If not -- the guy's a dead ringer for the infamous butler ("He's not in, he's not in, he's not in -- because he's out!") of Phineas T. Prune that we all know and love (and imitate at every opportunity). Sure LOOKED like him, anyway!

Definitely try to get hold of this one - you'll enjoy it!

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