I cinque pisellini - I corti di Elio

Summary

A mock fairy tale follows five little peas—Pisìn, Pea, Piso, Pisellone, and Pino—growing together in a pod. After a farmer picks them, they’re scattered in a series of comic mishaps: one is eaten, while another is sent flying out of a window.

The last pea ends up by the window of a frail, bedridden girl. As it grows there, she becomes fascinated by it, starts laughing, and gradually gets well. Her mother returns to find her up and about, happily tending to the plant.

The story closes with a teasing moral: the other peas are too busy being vain and arguing about trivial things to appreciate that, well, a pea is just a pea. The subtitles garble the Italian wordplay around “pisellini,” giving the tale an extra layer of accidental—and possibly deliberate—innuendo.

Characters

• The narrator
• The five peas
• The farmer
• The boy
• The sick girl
• Her mother
• An old man