Domenico (Sandro Panseri) has an interview for a job today, which will be his first since leaving school. His father leaves for work before he gets up and moves to rouse him, but his mother tells him to let the boy sleep on a little more since he has a big day ahead. When he does awaken, he gets into an argument with his younger brother about the use of his old book strap, but his mother points out that Domenico won't be needing it anymore anyway, and with this sobering thought in his mind, he sets off for the interview, which turns out to be more of a test...
Il Posto, sometimes simply known as The Job, was one of the first films of its director Ermanno Olmi to make waves internationally thanks to its acutely but not unsympathetically observed snapshot of a life in Italy that may not be headed anywhere especially important, or indeed satisfying. It was billed as a comedy, although you'd be hard pressed to divine any sidesplitting belly laughs from the adventures, such as they are, of young Domenico, as the main point seemed to be to depict the beginning of an adult life that promised nothing but disappointment and even, if he were to stop and take stock of his lot, outright despair.
What Olmi used to illustrate this was the promise of romance cruelly whisked away thanks to fickle fate, for when our hero visits the interview for a desk job in this large and faceless corporation he meets a girl of about his age who he is immediately attracted to, and wonders if the feeling is mutual. We never really find out if it was, although the girl, Antoinetta (Loredana Detto in her only film before she went on to marry the director), appears to like him, but whether it would ever have blossomed into the relationship Domenico hoped for is none too clear. One of those parts of life where you look back and muse over what might have been, then.
As to the interview, which takes pride of place in the middle of the story, it's a very strange affair which we could possibly find amusing, but in fact is a little sinister as we are not told what all this is for other than ascertaining whether the candidates are suitable or not. So there's a written examination, then some kind of medical where they line up and bend their knees then check for deafness, and finally a vocal test where they are asked all sorts of questions that presumably go onto some kind of file for the rest of their working days. In the centre of this Domenico plucks up the courage to ask Antoinetta out during lunch, and they opt for a coffee shop.
Something about the way she stirs his coffee when he loses his own spoon also stirs emotions in the lad, and however briefly they have made a connection. You could describe how this plays out as bittersweet, because although he makes efforts to see her again it never really plays out that way with Antoinetta hired for a different building and Domenico stuck as a messenger until the corporation can find a post for him. They pass each other a couple of times, but the coffee shop promise eludes them, even with the office's New Year's Eve do coming up. If Olmi wished us to chuckle at the quirks of an existence stuck in a job for life, then he failed; there are a few moments that raise a smile, but the overwhelming mood of Il Posto is one of crushing bleakness with the protagonist essentially trapped, and that final closeup of his face as he contemplates this is more chilling than melancholy - although it's that as well. Music by Pier Emilio Bassi.
