Easy Living (Orso and Peter Miyakawa, 2019): Italy

Reviewed by Ryo Nishimura. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2020.

During my time at the 2020 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Easy Living became my favorite film in the festival. Easy Living is a drama/comedy set in Italy and it follows a fourteen year old boy Brando, who is played Orso and Peter Miyakawa’s younger brother, and Camilla, played by Camilla Semino Favro. Brando lives under the supervision of Camilla who illegally smuggles medicine across the French and Italian border. They meet a comedic American tennis coach, Don, who dreams of one day becoming a painter. One day Brando encounters a friend, Elvis, who is an illegal immigrant. Elvis’s situation is sticky: he has a wife on the other side of the border who is pregnant with his baby. Elvis being an illegal immigrant needs to find a way to cross the border to get to his wife. Easy Living is a story about four uniquely different characters working towards one goal: getting Elvis across the border.

What I really liked about this movie was the cinematography and coloring. The shooting style almost felt like a Wes Anderson movie which I thought was interesting. Also in a couple of scenes, the actors break the fourth wall, which usually does not work in movies but I thought that it worked perfectly for Easy Living.

Another aspect of the film that I really enjoyed was the soundtrack. I remember walking out of the theatre and humming one of the songs that was in the movie, “Sleep Walk” by Santo & Johnny. Later at the Q&A, I learned that Orso and Peter composed some of the songs in the movie which I thought was very interesting. They talked about how when they we’re younger, their dreams were to become musicians but their interest in film took over over time. They said that when they were writing Easy Living, they had many existing song ideas that they wanted to put in the film but when they saw the price to use those songs, they had no other choice but to compose their own music.

Some flaws that I saw in this film was the character development. Obviously the story follows four characters who create an unexpected friendship and work towards one goal. But the story never really goes into the backstories of these characters. I was left there thinking; What are their values? Beliefs? Why are they there? Etc.  Now I don’t expect every movie to have an intricate backstory to every character, but for characters who drives the story forward I believe should be more three dimensional. In Easy Living, Elvis’ character was the one who caught my attention,  considering that he creates the conflict in the story. These group of people need to get Elvis across the border but I felt like I barely knew Elvis. Maybe it’s just me but I just felt like Elvis needed a little ore development.

Easy Living is a must see and will definitely leave you in a good mood after watching the movie.