Where it was filmed 'Bang Bang Baby'

The crime drama Bang Bang Baby, set in 1986, tells the story of young Alice, a shy and introverted teenager who lives with her factory worker mother in a town in Northern Italy, dreaming of a future less grey and banal that her destiny appears to be. Her life is overturned when she discovers that her dead father is actually alive and a member of powerful family in Milan’s organized crime world, the Barone clan from Calabria who live in the suburbs of the city. Out of love for her father, Alice begins a journey through an unknown universe ruled by arcane and mysterious rules, where the traditions of a distant culture mingle with blood and violence, where dialects overlap with the reassuring dialogue of a telefilm and the warmth of family conceals revenge, betrayal and murder.

The events that involve her take place mostly in Milan: locations include piazza Duomo, the exterior of the city’s Gothic cathedral clearly visible; the historic centre, setting for a feminist protest; and the Palazzo di Giustizia on corso di Porta Vittoria, where the Barone family “parades” before going to interrogate Alice’s father’s presumed lover who works in a nightclub in Milan. Many interiors were also used for the Barone family homes, Alice’s father’s prison and the fashionable night clubs filled with the politicians and yuppies of the time.  The 1980s setting has been perfectly recreated: Milan is a city of fast-food restaurants, women with their hair in rollers under salon dryers, a funfair, streets lined with enormous advertising hoardings, and neon lights. “Milano da bere” as it was known at the time, was in full economic expansion with bright colours and fashionable clubs, pulsating with the glamour of a lively, fun, slightly superficial but modern and dynamic city. The exact opposite of the working-class town where Alice lives with her mother, which is presented as an anonymous Italian province, its simple, peaceful style in neutral tones far from the exhilarating Lombard capital.