The Lady (web series)

Initially the web series was conceived by its creator Lory Del Santo as the second short film of a possible trilogy; the first, also distributed via the YouTube channel of the former showgirl April 2013,^[1] and similarly titled with a double English-Italian title, The Night Club - Osare per credere, which featured Gloria Contreras and Aída Yéspica.^[2] Subsequently, the duration of this second work reached that of a typical feature film, thus leading to the decision to be divided into webisodes of around ten minutes each, to be released on a weekly basis.^[3] The scenes of the first season were shot in two weeks^[4] in various locations, both Italian (Milan, Rome, Capri) and abroad (London, Paris, Miami),^[3] and the entire project was financed by Del Santo herself.^[4]

The provisional title of the web series was The Lady - L'amore questo sconosciuto, as Del Santo's press releases prior to publication attested.

Following a successful ironic review on the Italian edition of Vice by Niccolò Carradori,^[5] views of the web series increased dramatically. The technical incompetence, the almost complete lack of plot, the amateurism of the performers and the disorganicity that pervades the entire production immediately consecrated it as a masterpiece of trash culture and the surreal. Several commentators have jokingly compared The Lady to a film by David Lynch,^[6] for the absurdity of the situations and the incoherence of the dialogues, which involuntarily lead to total nonsense.

The Italian edition of Wired, in an article signed by the film critic Gabriele Niola, defined it as "a pure trash masterpiece", believing that with this web series Del Santo gave life to the "compulsive-chi' genre, with protagonists were "badly dressed men but very fit and tattooed" and women with "unthinkable physiques" who "express their internal monologues out loud and justify cosmetic surgery as a massage".^[7] Again, Niola, this time on Punto Informatico, points out how the product, which has obtained a good response in terms of views, is not aimed so much at the typical audience of successful Italian web series, but rather at viewers more comparable to the traditional television audience, which until then had been little involved in productions for the network.^[8] The column written by actress Francesca Petretto on Il Fatto Quotidiano criticizes the work, which seems to have been involuntarily created «to explain easily and with chilling precision the concept of trash», considering both the acting skills of the actors and actresses present and the technical side (including incorrect shots and dubbing out of sync) to be poor, while inviting readers to see it as a «truly enlightening experience».^[9] Il Secolo XIX highlighted how it was precisely the defects of the web series and its "grotesque ingredients" of the plot that made it successful, making it "such a trash product that it creates addiction" and therefore capable of becoming "an eagerly awaited event for Internet users".^[10]

On 8 December 2014, a preview of the tenth and last episode of the first season of The Lady was broadcast on Rai 2's program Quanto manca, in which some members of the cast were also invited and interviewed.^[11] The growing notoriety of the web series, albeit due to negative reviews, meant that it was also parodied by another Rai 2 program, Quelli che il calcio, which dedicated a sketch of the imitator Lucia Ocone.^[12]

On 28 May 2017, Del Santo received the "Web Award" for directing The Lady at the Intercommunal Amateur Film Festival of Brescia.^[13]