Class and Chaos on Lake Maggiore
TORONTO – The grand villas lining the shores of Northern Italy have long been treated by Anglo-American cinema as a singular luxury location, a generic playground where foreign wealth can unwind against a scenic backdrop. Yet, when Guy Ritchie moved the production of The Gentlemen Season 2 to Lake Maggiore, he shattered that perception. He chose instead to engage with the distinct regional personalities that define the region.
Rather than treating the location as passive scenery, Ritchie leaned directly into the area’s class warfare. The series bypasses the tour-bus crowds of Lake Como and the overexposed lanes of Stresa, centering its narrative across the water in Pallanza. American audiences might not understand the nuance, but to a domestic audience, this choice is significant. Pallanza represents an old-money, aristocratic discretion where traditional lake life remains unhurried. It offers the perfect, manicured canvas for a high-stakes criminal story.
And crucially, Ritchie’s care extends beyond location and directly into the casting room, offering a sharp counterpoint to decades of industry habits. For generations, American and UK casting directors have been notoriously lazy when casting in Italy. They routinely default to generic stereotypes or import recognizable non-Italian faces to mimic the culture.
Ritchie flips this paradigm entirely by spotlighting, rather than backdropping, top-tier Italian talent on a massive global Netflix stage. The series brings heavyweights like Sergio Castellitto and the magnetic Benedetta Porcaroli into the main ensemble, giving them meat to chew on alongside the British aristocracy. This choice reminds international audiences that Italy boasts some of the most versatile and charismatic dramatic actors outside of Hollywood.
The casting along with the lake’s setting delivers a refreshing, visual counter to the exhausted American “Mafia cliché.” Forcing the criminal infrastructure to operate out of neoclassical villas and immaculate, centuries-old lake gardens is something new within the genre. Watching localized mob power against the backdrop of pristine botanical lawns provides a visually compelling friction, if nothing else.
Ritchie’s real success lies in recognizing that the landscape itself is a living character capable of shifting the entire tone of a series. “This chapter sees a deliberate expansion, both geographically and thematically, as we journey from the English countryside to the Italian lakes…the stakes are heightened, the power dynamics are more precarious”, stated director Guy Ritchie.
By treating both the actors and the geography with genuine narrative respect, the production escapes the trap of the standard travelogue. It proves that when an international production stops exploiting Italy as a postcard and starts honoring its internal nuances, the resulting cinema achieves a timeless scale.
The show serves as a clear blueprint for how a stunning, historical location can easily defeat lazy clichés…proving that even if you are still telling a mafia story, the right setting can change everything.
Images courtesy of Netflix
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix
