Perfect Strangers (2016 film)

Eva and Rocco, husband and wife, invite their best friends to dinner: Cosimo and Bianca, Lele and Carlotta, and Peppe. The hosts are living a period of crisis, a situation exasperated by Eva's conflicted relationship with her teenage daughter Sofia, who finds an outlet for all her worries and needs only with her father; Cosimo and Bianca are a couple of newlyweds, he a taxi driver and she a veterinarian, who want to have a child; Lele and Carlotta are a couple who have been married for years with two children and various problems; Peppe is a divorced former physical education teacher who is currently unemployed. Peppe had promised to present to his friends Lucilla, his new partner, who unfortunately could not come to dinner because of a bad fever. During dinner, the friends discuss a couple who recently separated because of a betrayal discovered by his wife on reading a message on her husband's cell phone. After telling this story, Eva suggests everyone play a game: to place their mobile phone on the table and to accept that the content of all the communications they will receive during the evening (messages and phone calls) is revealed to everyone present. After many hesitations, the friends accept the intrigue, but unfortunately what was supposed to be a game soon turns into a public confession of all their most intimate secrets.

It turns out that Rocco, a plastic surgeon by profession, has long been in psychoanalysis, while his wife Eva, herself a psychoanalyst, knows nothing about it (Rocco has always declared to her that believes psychoanalysis is useless). Eva, on the other hand, wants to undergo breast reconstruction, but has made sure that the operation is not performed by her husband but by a famous surgeon, Blanchard; Rocco, after giving his daughter a box of condoms (discovered by Eva poking around Sofia's bag), gives her advice over the phone (heard by everyone) for her first sexual experience; Bianca is still in touch with her ex without her husband's knowledge, but only to help him face a new relationship; Cosimo, in addition to impregnating his lover (who is the operator of the taxi service), has an affair with Eva (but this relationship is revealed only to the viewers, even though it is implied that Rocco already knew about it); Carlotta, unbeknownst to her husband, has contacted a nursing home to get rid of her mother-in-law, who lives in their house; both Carlotta and Lele have online affairs.

Lele, to protect himself from the inevitable arrival of an erotic photo of his mistress, privately asks Peppe to exchange their mobile phones, as they have the same model; while avoiding discovery of his affair, Lele receives texts and calls from a certain Lucio, who, thinking he's talking to Peppe, declares that he misses his kisses. Everyone therefore thinks that Lele has a homosexual extramarital affair. The friends react very strongly to this discovery, especially Cosimo, apparently sorry that Lele never revealed his alleged homosexuality even to his best friends, but actually revealing deep-seated homophobia. Later, Peppe reveals the exchange of telephones and thus his own homosexuality, and that this was the real reason why he lost his teaching post, and he declares that he will not introduce Lucio to his friends as he wants to protect him from their reactions. Finally, it turns out that years earlier Carlotta, while driving drunk, caused an accident in which a man died, although it was Lele who took responsibility for the manslaughter in order to avoid his wife's imprisonment and thus the ruin of their family.

At the end of the evening, it is revealed that in reality the mobile phone game never happened, thanks to strong opposition from Rocco: the guests return home, after what was an ordinary dinner with friends. Everyone goes back to their own lies: Peppe is excluded from a five-a-side football match with an excuse by Lele, Cosimo and Rocco and, at the request of his friends, Peppe promises that at the next opportunity he will introduce them to the non-existent Lucilla (in reality his partner Lucio); Cosimo, in the car with Bianca, runs through the messages of his lover Marika and responds to a message from Eva, who in the meantime removes the earrings given her as a gift by Cosimo himself; Carlotta puts on the panties that her lover had asked her to take off and Lele secretly looks at the photo he received from his online lover.

• Giuseppe Battiston as Peppe[4]
• Anna Foglietta as Carlotta[4]
• Marco Giallini as Rocco[4]
• Edoardo Leo as Cosimo[4]
• Valerio Mastandrea as Lele[4]
• Alba Rohrwacher as Bianca[4]
• Kasia Smutniak as Eva[4]
• Benedetta Porcaroli as Sofia[4]

The film was number-one on its opening week in Italy, with US$3.7 million.[3]

On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 77% based on reviews from 13 critics.[6]

• In 15 December 2016, a Greek remake by Greek actor/director Thodoris Atheridis as Teleioi Xenoi was released.
• In 2017, one year after the original's release, Perfect Strangers was remade by Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia as Perfectos desconocidos.[8][9]
• The Turkish version titled Cebimdeki Yabancı was directed by Serra Yılmaz and released in Turkey on February 2, 2018.[10][11]
• A French-language version of the film, titled Le Jeu (lit. The Game), was directed by Fred Cavayé and released in France in late 2018.[12] The English title of the film on Netflix is Nothing to hide.[13]
• An unofficial remake of the movie was released in India in 2018 under the title Loudspeaker in Kannada language.[14][15]
• The South Korean remake, Intimate Strangers (완벽한 타인), was released in South Korea on October 31, 2018.[16]
• The Hungarian remake BÚÉK directed by Krisztina Goda was released on December 6, 2018.[17]
• The Mexican remake Perfectos desconocidos (Mexican film) directed by Manolo Caro (creator of The House of Flowers on Netflix) was released in Mexico on December 25, 2018 and the United States on January 11, 2019.[18]
• The Chinese remake, Kill Mobile (来电狂响), was released in the United Kingdom on 28 December 2018,[19] before China on 29 December 2018,[20] and Singapore on 10 January 2019.[21]
• A Russian remake Loud Connection, created by the Kvartet I, was released on Valentine's Day in 2019.[22]
• In September 2019 the Polish version (Nie)znajomi was released, directed by Tadeusz Sliwa.[23]
• The German remake, Das perfekte Geheimnis, was released on October 31, 2019.[24]
• In 2019 the remake of the film in Armenia by the film-maker Arsho Harutyunyan. It was called An Unknown Subscriber (Անհայտ բաժանորդ) and was a big success.

As of November 2019, remakes were underway in Qatar and Sweden.[25] The rights to an English-language version were purchased by The Weinstein Company in the USA,[26] though director Genovese has stated that he is unsure whether the US version will be completed due to the fall of Harvey Weinstein[25] and the subsequent bankruptcy of the company.

• Perfect Strangers on IMDb
• Perfect Strangers at Rotten Tomatoes