Not really a bird but the metaphor of a bird, used to describe a certain technique in Water Polo. In this movie, dressed in red, it becomes a metaphor for the political situation in Italy in the late 80s.
I have a strong and inexhaustible passion for Nanni Moretti's films, all of them, but this one still astonishes me by its high level of analysis and presaging of the situation in Italy today (the underestimated The Caïman would go on to offer a darker portrait 17 years later… Berlusconi's legacy is heavy).
But in 1989, Moretti still had his uproarious sense of auto-derision and spends the whole film in swimming trunks, in the water or in the stands, a swimming cap on the head, abusing a journalist and anybody else who happened to venture within earshot.
