Two ageing drinkers, Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) in Francesco Sossai’s The Last One for the Road drift across the barren outskirts of Venice in search of their old friend Genio (Andrea Pennacchi) and a final drink. Their chaotic journey pulls in Giulio (Filippo Scotti), a shy architecture student whose morning academic review is gradually sacrificed to bars and his new cohort’s half-remembered stories of youth.
Carlobianchi and Doriano have the swagger of road-movie sages, treating irresponsibility as wisdom and drunkenness as philosophy. They are charming but faintly tragic, still performing youth deep into middle age, though Sossai rarely explores that underlying sadness. Their mantra, “There’s never another time”, lands as both an invitation and warning.
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Shot with tactile affection for old houses and the bruised beauty of its setting, the film draws thematic richness from the landscape. This comes into focus in a comic sequence in which the trio pose as architects at a count’s villa. One of the weaker elements is Giulio’s transformation. His gradual loosening-up is sweet, especially once he plucks up the courage to connect with someone from his past, but his bond with the older men sometimes feels assumed rather than earned. Still, the film finds an unsteady tenderness in lives lived badly, but not without feeling.
