Elvis and Marilyn

The film chronicles the melancholy journey of two celebrity look-alikes chasing their dream of la dolce vita in Italy. Romanian Marilyn Monroe impersonator Ileana and Bulgarian Elvis double Nicolaj win a look-alike contest in Bucharest in which the prize is a summer engagement in a nightclub on Italy's Adriatic coast. The two strangers take off together, communicating in the broken Italian they picked up from TV. When a bureaucratic hitch with Ileana's passport cuts them off at the airport, they cross the border illegally by car, travelling through a part of Yugoslavia devastated by war. They accept hospitality at a military outpost, but the suicide of a colonel there casts suspicion on Ileana. Beaten and afraid, they continue their odyssey across the harsh sunless no-man's-land gradually scarring them both and clouding their hopes. They finally reach Italy, but all is not as promised.

Director

Armando Manni

Writers

Massimo Torre, Armando Manni

Released

May 8, 1998

Language

Italian