Grotesque Portrait of southern Italy

Yet again another film that provides a grotesque picture of Sicily (just like 'Mafioso' by Lattuada, and so many other). If the characters of this movie were all black, and it had ridiculed some village in Africa or in the south of the US, providing simplistic vignettes as complex as a dial tone it would have been labelled as RACIST and it would have been heavily criticized left and right. Since it's about Sicily, no matter how simplistic, racist, and pointless it is, it was seen as 'funny', 'amuzing' and it was awarded an Oscar. This film really gives a perfect idea of the racist and derogative views of Northern Italy of the south. It took the 80's and films like Il Postino and Nuovo Cinema Paradiso to provide a more gentle (despite being still 'vignette' style) view of Sicily. It doesn't matter that, percentage wise, Lombardy was (and IS) the region were most adultery murder take place (23% in 2004, in Sicily 14%, ANSA survey )...it's all about portraying the backward south and ridiculing Sicilians with the usual insipid and stupid vignettes. There is not one single character in this film that does not seem to be drawn out of a farce. Comedy needs to make us laugh, OK, but a comedy worthy of an award should at least have a little more depth and complexity than this pathetic derogative farse.