Wanna is the portrait of a wicked and irresistible icon

You come out, to say the least, dazed by that breathtaking tunnel that is the vision of Wanna, the docuseries that debuts on Netflix on September 21st dedicated to Wanna Marchi, an incontrovertible and immediately recognizable character. The estrangement comes precisely from the fact that practically everyone in Italy knows the parable of this phenomenal TV seller, the one who, riding the trend of private TVs of the Eighties, founded an empire by waging war on lard and substantially insulting the same people who then had to buy from her. (and they bought); she, at the same time, that she signed one of the most worrying pages of Italian justice by being condemned, together with her inevitable daughter Stefania Nobile, for having set up an unparalleled system of blackmail and loan sharking. This black-white, this ying and yang coexist in this story and above all are unified by the magnetic magic of Marchi, which in her life has essentially always sold itself.

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Aware of his judicial past, for which he has paid any penalties, we should not be moved to proximity to the figure of Wanna Marchi, yet his charm is too powerful to remain unscathed. Wanna practically never gives the idea of ​​being an apology, being careful to provide numerous testimonies that always return a certain ambiguous three-dimensionality to his character. Yet the first episodes above all tell a compelling epic, that of a woman who came out of nowhere, ended up in a humiliating marriage, who only thanks to her ease and some unscrupulous commercial gimmick (the Loose Belly!) Manages to climb a social elevator in unthinkable ways. even at the time. Her frank, Emilian attitude, her never pretending to be more refined or cultured than she is, her strenuous desire to stand out from the crowd make her seem almost sympathetic.

As you go into it in the narrative, however, Wanna takes on that true crime tone typical of many similar productions in the Netflix catalog: the intimidation of the mafia, the shady business partners, the appearance of mysterious Freemasons and above all the second part of his career, that page marked by the sale of the lottery numbers, of the salt that does not melt due to the evil eye, of the master of life Do Nascimento (who returns to talk here after years) and of the call centers that did not let truce and stole millions especially from the most fragile, of the investigation of Strip. Marchi at one point thought she was so good at selling anything, says one of the many witnesses, that at a certain point she was convinced she could sell nothing. But above all she can persuade others, even in a bad way.

Netflix The rest is judicial history. The docuseries of Alessandro Garramone who wrote it with Davide Bandiera under the direction of Nicola Prosatore, makes extensive and wise use (only at times too frenetic) of numerous archive images but also of unpublished interviews including those with interesting direct particular relevance when investigating the deep and sometimes morbid bond between mother Wanna and daughter Stefania (the ex-husband is talked about for a long time and in a certainly not flattering way, the other son is instead completely removed): the two shared joys and pain, glory and misery, even a part of prison life. The two inseparable, who give each other strength, who do everything for each other. In certain twists and turns of words one almost doubts that Nobile was the true inflexible and sadistic mind of the whole operation of lucky numbers and the evil eye. Marchi would thus rise to a further tragic, as well as demonic figure, almost wedged between maternal love and her talent to charm others which had become the very reason for validation and life.

It is interesting that Wanna's insert into the same narrative and productive path opened by SanPa, because here too there is a sort of charismatic leader who, thanks to his figure and his storytelling ability, has managed to cover unspeakable misdeeds. And even these four episodes are basically a very particular and precise cross-section of Italy, of a certain Italy that has passed in a traumatic way from the eighties of hedonism, of easy money and of the compulsion to buy in the nineties of the loss, of the fragility, the search for immediate and senseless protection. Wanna Marchi entered into that trauma, sensing the needs of the spectators and molding them on her person, because after all they were also hers: she was selling the promise of becoming beautiful, rich and famous, the same promise that perhaps she never managed to sell. to itself.