original title:
A.A.A. Achille
directed by:
cast:
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cinematography:
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distribution:
country:
Italy
year:
2000
film run:
88'
format:
colour
release date:
20/06/2003
Achilles is a very intelligent boy with a creative mind who stutters and expresses himself by building bizarre and fantastic toys. Having tried almost everything to help Achilles get over his stutter, his family decides to take him to Villa Agorà, a summer clinic run by Dr Aglieri, the inventor of the “sing-talk” method. This consists of making patients talk by modulating their voices into a sort of singsong rhythm. Alessandra is a fellow patient.
She is beautiful, shy and unhappily engaged and stutters at the beginning of all her sentences. Remo is a teacher at the clinic and a former stuttered. He is the one who brings some welcome light and happiness to the patients. This is his first experience of working with Dr Aglieri and Remo is much more interested than the doctor in establishing a warm relationship with the patients.
Life at Villa Agorà is a series of funny and poetic situations until the final test that Dr Aglieri considers as the final and most tangible demonstration of the validity of his method. It consists in taking the patients to a big shopping mall leaving them for thirty minutes alone. During that time they must show that they are able to communicate with the strangers around them.