THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
There is no doubt that there is not so far from anger to melancholy. The first carries outwards what the second returns towards itself. The same spite towards the world and society, no doubt, affects them. Thus we see the passage from Nanni Moretti number one, rabid and histrionic contemptuous of the stupidity and cowardice of his fathers and contemporaries, to Nanni Moretti number two, now painful awareness of the legacy that his own generation grants to his children. Twenty years, no more, illuminate the passage from one state to another, the time spent by youth. Nothing there that very human.
What does it matter, since this creator among the most intimately affectionate (or on the contrary hated) of his spectators leaves here (I am a self-sufficient, 1976; Personal diary, 1994) like there (The son’s room, 2001; Habemus papam, 2011) for wonderful films to share. Presented in competition at Cannes in May, Tre piani disconcerted, even disappointed, undoubtedly because of the appearance of a new coloring in the Morettian affective color chart – bitterness – and of an unusually didactic, not to say padlocked, turn of the staging.
The film adapts Three floors, an Israeli novel by Eshkol Nevo (Gallimard, 2018) transposed in Rome, in a building of character. Three dysfunctional families are paying the price. Lucio, Sara and their little girl Francesca. Monica and Giorgio. Vittorio, Dora and their son Andrea. In the first, the father maintains the delusional conviction that an elderly neighbor, to whom the couple regularly entrusts his daughter, has abused her. In the second, a young woman, abandoned by a husband who travels the world, fears going crazy like her mother and gives birth alone to her daughter. In the third, a couple of magistrates sees their son, idle and alcoholic, accidentally killing a passerby in a car; the inflexible father (Nanni Moretti) will force his wife to never forgive her for this ultimate slip up.
Misfortune and madness to grind
Suffice to say that there is misfortune and madness to grind here, and that the male sex, as rigid as they are unconsciously evil, takes such a prominent part in it that it seems all the same a little disproportionate. Because it is Lucio’s macho fantasies, Giorgio’s indifference, Vittorio’s moral frigidity and Andrea’s stupidity that, in this film, disturb those around them and prevent the world from turning.
This does not mean, moreover, that the female characters pull the chestnuts out of this sick fire. The irresolution (Dora), the madness (Monica), the insignificance (Sara), even the sexual provocation and the manipulation (a youth of the building), are largely granted to them in sharing.
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