Mediterranea Inferno review - a bruising, intensely stylish post-COVID nightmare

So how was your lockdown? Three years on, as the 'new normal' rapidly recedes, life under COVID restrictions feels almost like a fever dream, any thought to the lingering trauma of enforced isolation ignored, dismissed, or forgotten. Mediterranea Inferno, though, remembers. This second outing from The Milky Way Prince's Lorenzo Redaelli - a creator working in the shadow of Italy's stringent, long-lasting coronavirus measures - has a lot on its mind, beginning with the impact those wilderness years have had on the collective conscious, particularly on young adults grappling with a sense of lost time at a critical juncture in their lives.

More than that, it presents - albeit in an exaggerated, darkly humorous fashion - a vision of paralysing generational malaise in the face of an uncertain present, a diminishing future, and eroding protections for vulnerable minorities. It's anxiety piled upon trauma, distilled into Mediterranea Inferno's three leads: a trio of beautiful, fashionable, popular Milan club kids in their early 20s - collectively known as 'I ragazzi del sole', the Sun Guys - who between them represent something of a holy triumvirate of identity, sociality, and power.

With our trio introduced, time smash-cuts to August 2022 when, after two years apart due to Italy's lingering COVID restrictions, the previously inseparable friends reunite in the blazing heat of a southern Italian summer. Each, though, has been changed by the trauma of the intervening years; Claudio, the once charismatic, confident leader of the group, is struggling to find his identity in a cultural and generational void; Andrea, previously the life of the party, feels hollowed in the absence of any real human connection, and only Mida, once aloof and uncertain, seems to have moved forward, having landed an influential, jet-setting modelling gig during lockdown. And while the boys soon settle into their old rhythms, there's a simmering undercurrent of tension, dysfunction, and perhaps even resentment, as long-held and newfound insecurities fester, and their three-day vacation in Puglia threatens to implode.

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