With Frattellini, Galleria Toledo presented a powerful AIDS drama, one based on traditional Catholic imagery that cut through hypocrisy surrounding the conditions victims of the disease must endure. Gildo (Francesco Silvestri) tells his mother every day that he is going to mass but instead goes to care for his brother (Walter Del Gaiso) in an antiquated, run-down hospital room. It is never clear whether Gildo, himself another type of outcast because of Down's syndrome, realizes that other potential caregivers like their mother and the nurses are incapable of facing the reality of his brother's unnamed terminal illness. Only with his child-like partial understanding is Gildo capable of dealing with this situation.
Bracketing each action with words from the Catholic mass, Gildo stammers his way through an hour-long monologue to his perpetually silent brother, who is both witness to and object of Gildo's unselfish love. At one point a condom is solemnly lifted in the air as a substitute communion wafer. Gildo grooms and feeds his brother, changes his bed and finally strips and washes him, in commemoration of the deposition and burial of Christ. Up to then silent, self-absorbed and expressionless, his brother lets out a cry of despair after Gildo leaves.
References to Christian imagery and the title derived from the words the priest uses to address the congregation during the mass, might have little resonance for U.S. audiences but became very moving in the Neapolitan context.
