Valerio Isidori Movies

The English title of this complex Italian film is apt. Featuring 65 main characters and 130 speaking parts (famous faces abound and many of the actors appeared gratis), and ranging in tone from tartly humorous to darkly tragic, it presents 30 interwoven slices from the lives of modern day Romans during a single day. The lone, silent figure of a lone jogger provides a sort of continuity between the vignettes. Beginning at sunset of the previous day, the jogger is seen warming up on his apartment terrace, looking for all the world as if he would like to jump. The rest of the stories seem to be randomly presented. Stories include the robbery of a Chinese restaurant that causes a birthday celebrant to die of fright, two different newlyweds who find themselves attracted to each other, an opportunistic mechanic's plan to capitalize on the death of a rival, a sneaky, sadistic meter maid and others. One uniting feature of the stories is their underlying bitter assessment of modern humanity. People are seen as selfish and basically cruel, still the stories move quickly and the balance between humor and drama, affection and cynicism, and shallowness and complexity is carefully maintained. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this entertaining drama, "Carefree Giovanni" (Sergio Castellitto) is the beleaguered last heir to a dukedom closely associated with the great artist Leonardo da Vinci. As the curtain opens, one of Giovanni's ancestors drops dead when he hears that Leonardo has died. Cut to the present, and the last duke in this line, Giovanni, is miserable in a home shared by two older women who browbeat and badger him without mercy. Giovanni's one solace is to go up on the rooftop and gaze out at the world around him as he daydreams. He has a special passion for the lovely Claire (Eleonora Girogi) who lives next door. To show his sincerity, he zooms off paper airplanes in her direction. However, these missiles are made from actual letters written by the great Leonardo himself. Could this man be last link in the lineage that started 400 years earlier? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi