Ahh, to be young and well off and living in Italy!
Oh yes.
In the Italy of the 1950s (and 1960s), to be precise.
I wasn't there to enjoy it, but it lives on in films, and people who
were around to enjoy it still dream about it today - even though it probably WAS, even then, just what you said: a fantasy.
Still, at least there was a semblance of
dolce vita, which is no more.
By the early 1990s (and probably much sooner than that) people who had visited the Via Veneto in Rome, for example, back in the 1950s and 1960s, must have been dreadfully disappointed. The sidewalk cafes were still there, but the "atmosphere", the ambiance in the evenings was totally different - no extravagant opulence, no film stars with 64 snow-white teeth and diamonds in their ears, no mindless "gaiety", just murky characters fishing for an easy buck.
(I've heard people say it's because of the activity of the Brigate Rosse in the 1970s, which is supposed to have dampened social life; but I think it's much more likely that the Brigate Rosse were themselves a symptom, certainly not a cause of anything.)
But I digress...
Of course the story is a stretch, to put it mildly. ;)
That's precisely why I like watching it so much.
It's like a picturesque fairy tale, from a time when anything - like having a merry, carefree life for the rest of your days - seemed possible.
(Or it seems that way retrospectively, anyway.)
As to the idle young rich in Italy today... they lead more or less the same kind of life as their peers in any other European country with a relatively short tradition of true democracy, I suppose. University during the day, nightclubs in the evenings. Not much has changed, I suppose, except mindless flaunting of one's riches would be frowned upon today (if only for reasons of social convenience).
Search for "pariolini" for more (albeit somewhat stereotypical) information. ;)
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