Raffa is Disney's new Rainbow Saint patron. La Carrà (who is never dead on television) returns and shines again like the comet star (she was) for the entire entertainment world and beyond. This is what happens on the screens of subscribers to the Disney+ platform during these half-holidays between Christmas and New Year thanks to the first original documentaries in three one-hour episodes signed by director Daniele Luchetti.
The series skillfully switches from black and white to color, following the different chromatic nuances of the diva's biography and maintaining as a unifying feature the double register that is deeply inherent in Raffa's story. Pelloni and Carra. The two surnames through which the series examines with tender curiosity the entire life of the diva, perhaps dwelling a little too much on the images that made Carrà an icon of the LGBT community. Something that happened because of a choice made by the rainbow population out of pure love that Raffaella herself repeatedly said she never fully explained. However, she dropped it as well as her style as a generous and polymorphic diva. What gave Carrà as much as little, he kept the essentials for Pelloni.
The latter was particularly expressed through the words of her nephew Matteo and the nanny who looked after her as a child. A strong character, Pelloni's, similar to that of her mother Iris, who had raised her alone. A suit of armor in which Raffaella could disappear off stage. His strength is almost unbelievable. Because of his resistance to work and his stubborn desire to hide from everyone, he spent the last months of his life with an illness in the shadows and in absolute secrecy. None of the many friends interviewed (from Fiorello to Tiziano Ferro to Renzo Arbore) understood exactly whether in reality the spirit of deep confidentiality prevailed in this choice or the desire not to obscure, even for a moment, the dream of the Carrà halo.
A magic that lives between so much music and so much silence, so much freedom, as I said, to let others interpret their own character in their own way. A choice thanks to which Carrà multiplied endlessly. He even managed to hold together the image of simplicity and inevitable fame, which he managed to hide behind kindness, infectious laughter and blonde bob.
IN HOLLYWOOD WITH FRANK
The symbols par excellence of an Italian who never knew boundaries: she ended up in Hollywood for the first time at a very young age, where she met Frank Sinatra and worked with him. Then, at the age of 30, he appeared as Raffa in Spain, where, ideally, thanks to his variety show where anything was allowed, he contributed to liberating Iberian society from the Franco dictatorship, which took place precisely in the mid-seventies came to the Spanish television screens, gave up, I'm going over to democracy. A sparkle, that of Raffa – to put it in the words of Carrà's dream stylist Luca Sabatelli, who himself died a month ago and gave in again and again to the silence of the retreat of Porto Santo Stefano in the Argentario, where she wanted to be buried. A place that the documentaries trace with the silent steps of Sergio Japino, the historical companion. Perhaps the only one who could observe the perfect meeting point between Pelloni and Carrà. Between the wonderful naturalness of a strong and lonely woman and the immortality of a myth “for everyone”.