Michela Giraud: The Truth I Swear! is the new Netflix special, starring the famous Italian stand-up comedian unravelling her uproarious life experiences, on stage. The show was released on April 6, 2022, with a runtime of just over an hour. From the stage of Vinile, in Rome, the show is directed by Vittorio Antonacci and has original Italian audio with English subtitles.
-Michela Giraud: The Truth I Swear Review does not contain any spoilers-
Who is Michela Giraud?
Michela Giraud is a famous Italian stand-up comedian who started her career in 2015 & soon gained popularity with her role in the comedy TV show, Colorado. Followed by various stints on TV shows and viral monologues from her stand-up on Youtube, made her a well-known name. In 2020, she won the Satire Award for Best Stand-Up Comedian.
The Truth: Self Deprecating mirror of the Society
The show starts off with a quick performance of the intro music, followed by Michela Giraud telling about her feud with Demi Lovato fans when she came out as non-binary. Michela never imagined that she would be getting death threats from someone named ‘cutiepie337’ over a harmless joke that, she didn’t think would land her in a Twitter storm.
Moving from her antagonist’s popularity, a major portion of her show is about being a not-so-stick-thin female in this world. Michela Giraud hates to be called ‘curvy’. The word curvy to her sounds like a monster coming to raid everyone’s refrigerators. Shopping is a nightmare where you are outcasted to the ‘curvy zone’ with trial room mirrors conflicting with your self-love.
She jokes that women are no more than a piece of cardboard since they are always called ‘tough’ when they achieve anything that’s normal for a male counterpart. But men arent spared as well, she says that white straight men are a marginalised group now and further jokes about the notorious podcasts by such men that think women are second-grade citizens.
I Swear!: All comes down to Childhood
To talk about the stand-up show, you don’t even need to know anything about Michela Giraud because she will tell all about her life history in the show. Born in 1987 in North Rome, in a middle-class Catholic family, she was bound to grow up with anxiety, panic attacks, Catholic guilt & impending sense of doom (woah).
She explains that the reason why she can’t deal with her newfound fame is because of her family motto – fear the god. The irony of the religious teachings that tell us never to celebrate our joys so much that God might see us and punishes us. Of course with all the chaos & destruction in the world, being happy for a full score in maths is a valid reason for doom.
The best thing about Michela Giraud is that she can easily move from one topic to another while carrying on the trail from the previous topic. Her point of view about growing up with controlling parents and a disabled sibling with Asperger’s is a plot of a sitcom. Even after gaining fame, she still hasn’t got acknowledged by her parents, who are always trying to get her the job of a security guard at the museum.
Final thoughts: Stream it or Skip it?
It’s not easy to judge a comedy stand-up when you are watching the comedian for the first time. The Netflix special Michela Giraud: The Truth I Swear! will make you laugh & you will get to discover a lot about the life of a not-so-thin roman girl growing up in the ’90s. The title of the show stands as true, touching on unexpected topics like fame, family and acceptance of oneself in relation to stereotypes.
The jokes are not some random words but there’s a single theme running throughout the show, that’s Michela Giraud herself. She is the focal point of the show with satire free from hypocrisy and provocative awareness that comes from her riveting real-life anecdotes.
Michela Giraud: The Truth, I Swear! is streaming on Netflix.
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