Paola Comencini

Birth : 1951-06-08, Rome, Italy

Movies

Il principe di Roma
Production Design
An adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol set in 1829 Rome.
I fratelli De Filippo
Production Design
The story of the De Filippo brothers, children of Eduardo Scarpetta.
Under the Riccione Sun
Production Design
While vacationing on the crowded beaches of Riccione, a group of teenagers becomes fast friends as they grapple with relationship issues and romance.
Io sono Tempesta
Production Design
To avoid jail, a tax-dodging businessman is sentenced to a year of community service in a homeless shelter.
Something New
Production Design
Lucia and Maria are two best friends, who have known each other from the beginning of their life, but have very different tastes and behaviors. Lucia is done with men, Maria, on the contrary, cannot be without one. One night, the perfect man shows up in Maria's bed: handsome, sensible, mature and passionate.The next morning brings up misunderstandings and lies which make the two friends split up and take a break for themselves. Maybe that young man met by chance is really the one every woman is looking for, because with his simple theories he manages to paint the perfect picture of the two women's lives.
La scena
Production Design
Latin Lover
Production Design
The five daughters of a famous actor, all from different mothers and different nationalities, get together on the 10th anniversary of his death for a celebration of his career.
Welcome Mr. President!
Production Design
In a small mountain village lives a man with a challenging name, Giuseppe Garibaldi (one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland"), but everybody call him with the nickname Peppino. Love fishing, the company of friends, the library where he works as a precarious employee. He is an optimistic person even if his child accuse him of being a wannabe. One day, due to a mess of politicians, an amazing thing happens: Peppino is mistakenly elected President of the Italian Republic. Pulled out from his quiet life, is to play a role for which he knows he is obviously inappropriate, but his common sense and his instinctive gestures are incredibly effective, except for the etiquette, for which he is in trouble. The inflexible and fascinating Deputy Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic, Janis Clementi, is anxious to no avail in an attempt to regulate the unpredictable actions of the President...
The Unlikely Prince
Production Design
A princess has to pretend to be in love with a rude and ignorant boy to obtein success among her citizens.
ACAB : All Cops Are Bastards
Production Design
A look at the controversial riot cops unit, told through the stories of three veteran cops and a young recruit.
Welcome to the North
Production Design
Now in the Far North (i.e. Milan!), Alberto has accepted to manage a program for efficiency improvement in the Italian Post. He devotes all his time and all his energy to this noble task and neglects his wife Silvia, which of course annoys her beyond limits. Things do not fare much better in Castellabate where it is rather Maria, Matta's wife, who gets on his nerves by always blaming him for his lack of ambition. One day, due to a misunderstanding, Mattia is transferred to... Milan! And on whose doorstep does he land? Alberto's of course!
Welcome to the South
Production Design
Alberto (Claudio Bisio), post office manager of a small town in Brianza, under pressure of his wife Sylvia (Angela Finocchiaro), is willing to do anything to get the transfer to Milan. Even pretending to be disabled to climb in the ranking. But the trick does not work and as punishment, he is transferred in a small town in Campania, which to an inhabitant of the north is equivalent to a nightmare ...
The White Space
Production Design
An unexpected pregnancy and premature birth become a burden that Maria is unprepared for. Lacking control over events for the first time in her life, she retreats into an emotional space where she is alone, until the day arrives when she must learn to live again for the sake of her vulnerable child.
The Ladies Get Their Say
Production Design
Every Thursday a group of ladies would gather to play cards and discuss their loves, lives and children while their daughters played in the next room. Thirty years later, the daughters meet at a funeral for one of the mothers. Like their mothers, they discuss their hopes, dreams and fears.
Romanzo Criminale
Production Design
After serving prison time for a juvenile offense, Freddo gathers his old buddies Libano and Dandi and embarks on a crime spree that makes the trio the most powerful gangsters in Rome. Libano loves their new status, and seeks to spread their influence throughout the underworld, while the other two pursue more fleshly desires. For decades, their gang perpetrates extravagant crimes, until paranoia threatens to split the friends apart.
I Like to Work – Mobbing
Production Design
A woman comes across the difficulties of modern work: to force her to resign from her job, her firm tries all the humiliation techniques known as "mobbing". The film is based upon real cases reported by Italian unions.
Il posto dell'anima
Production Design
Three workers of a tire factory, in southern Italy, lead the struggle against the American company owner of the factory who wants to close the Italian branch in which they work.
Cristallo di rocca - Una storia di Natale
Production Design
Tanti Auguri
Production Designer
A Donatello award nominated short drama about a young woman who returns home on her thirtieth birthday to some answer-phone messages that lead her to reminisce.
Esercizi di stile
Production Design
The end of a love story, told in fourteen different styles: from comedy to western, from noir to thriller, silent movie and so on.
Miracle of Marcellino
Production Design
In the 15th century, in a poor Italian village, the monks of a modest convent take up an abandoned baby. Unfortunately, for all their efforts, they prove unable to trace his parents. So they set up providing tender loving care to the little boy. Marcellino lives a happy life among the men of God but, as he grows up, he misses his mother more and more.
The Amusements of Private Life
Production Design
Italian-French costume dramedy that takes place in France in the end of 18th Century during the French Revolution. It is "The Marriage of Figaro" meets "The Dangerous Liaisons" and it tells the story of two women, Mathilde Seurat, the actress and Julie Renard, the aristocratic wife and a mother (Delphine Forest plays both) with the same face who came from the different parts of society and at one point exchanged their identities and their lives. The movie also features Giancarlo Giannini and great Vittorio Gassman.
Merry Christmas... Happy New Year
Production Design
In this romantic story, a couple (Michel Serrault and Virna Lisi) who have been married for over forty years are forced to separate, one to each of their two children's families, when they can no longer pay the rent on their longtime apartment. Absence, in this case, refreshes their memory of the love they have shared, and they take to meeting one another furtively in hotel rooms for sex and affection. One summer, as each of their daughters families takes them on separate vacations, they have had enough, and elope, finding contentment as lighthouse keepers off the coast of Sicily.
Merry Christmas... Happy New Year
Costume Design
In this romantic story, a couple (Michel Serrault and Virna Lisi) who have been married for over forty years are forced to separate, one to each of their two children's families, when they can no longer pay the rent on their longtime apartment. Absence, in this case, refreshes their memory of the love they have shared, and they take to meeting one another furtively in hotel rooms for sex and affection. One summer, as each of their daughters families takes them on separate vacations, they have had enough, and elope, finding contentment as lighthouse keepers off the coast of Sicily.
The Gamble
Production Design
When Francesco returns home with the assumption that his father's wealth will be there to keep him content, he discovers that his father has lost everything to a German countess while gambling.
La Bohème
Production Design
The film tells the story of a love affair between a poor poet and an equally poor seamstress in 19th century Paris.
Vacanze in America
Production Design
A group of students from the San Crispino school for boys take a holiday in the United States, traveling from New York to Los Angeles. Young Father Don Buro has great difficulty controlling the youngsters, especially trouble making ex-student Peo, and finds himself distracted by the attractive single mother of one of the boys.
Identification of a Woman
Costume Design
The movie director Niccolò has just been left by his wife. Subsequently he embarks on an obsessive relationship with a young woman who eventually leaves him and disappears while searching for her, he meets a variety of other willing girls. This gives him the idea of making a movie about women's relationships. He starts to search for a woman who can play the leading part in the movie.
Prickly Pears
Production Design
Lorenzo is the mayor of a small town. One evening, returning home, surprised the well-known playboy Ghigo Buccilli who tries to seduce his beautiful wife. Enraged, he threatens the two with a gun, and Buccilli is the victim of a heart attack: the man survives but, forced to total rest, remains at the mayor's house. The result is an endless series of gags and misunderstandings, due to the stratagems devised by Lorenzo to avoid that the situation becomes the subject of gossip by fellow citizens ...
Men or Not Men
Costume Design
In Milan, in the winter of 1944, the ruthless Cane Nero leads the fascists against the partisans. Enne 2, one of the leading figures of the C.N.L., meets Berta, whom he loved three years ago, but Berta refuses to leave her husband for him. Enne 2 is pursued by the fascists of Cane Nero and, instead of running away to Turin, waits for Berta to rejoin him
Traffic Jam
Costume Design
A large international cast takes part in this comedy in which the stories of numerous individuals whose cars are stalled in a massive Roman traffic jam are told.
La Presidentessa
Assistant Costume Designer
Gobette, a young avant-garde dancer, finds herself unemployed after the closure of the provincial club where she performs. By pure coincidence, Cipriano Gaudet, Minister of Justice, meets her at a judge's house and, convinced that she is the wife of the subordinate, gives promotions to the unsuspecting representative of the law in order to remove him from the woman and be able to get married with the soubrette. ..
The Cat
Assistant Costume Designer
Amedeo and Ofelia, middle aged brother and sister, own jointly an old decadent, but still attractive, condominium. They want to sell it, but before they have to evict all the tenants. Of course, these don't want to leave at all. The cat (Il Gatto), mascot and beloved by all, dies and this gives the two an excuse to enter the tenants' life. Amedeo starts to court the young Wanda and Ofelia seduces the priest Don Pezzolla. In the meantime police is looking for the cat killer...
Goodnight, Ladies and Gentlemen
Assistant Costume Designer
An episodic satire of the political and social status of Italy in the seventies, through the shows of one day of a television channel. An English language lesson turns into a killing of a black dignitary of an embassy by a CIA agent and then into his own killing by another colleague. In a television film, the police are befooled by a fake bomb and put a real one in order not to be derided by the public. In a film inquisition show, the bishop of Naples speaks highly of the importance of the family, but a child who lives a miserable family life kills himself. In the debate that follows it is proposed that they should eat the children, as Swift had said. In the next episode, a general who is in the toilet is called for the NATO parade, but the flasher breaks and in his effort to fix it, he dirts allover and kills himself. In a children's show an inspector finds excuses and delays the arrest of a powerful man...
Luna di miele in tre
Assistant Costume Designer
Close to the honeymoon, hotel waiter wins a stay in Jamaica with a pin-up. Direction directed by Carlo Vanzina, with the star of "Deep Throat".
Till Marriage Do Us Part
Assistant Set Decoration
The Marquise Eugenia di Maqueda, an orphan raised by the nuns, marries Raimondo Corrao, but on their wedding night she finds out that he is her brother. The piece of news is in a letter written from Paris by their father, a womaniser who lives and hides from them in the French headtown. The pair decide, to avoid the scandal, to live as brother and sister. He will later leave for the war in Lybia, she will find solace and sexual satisfaction in the arms of the family chauffeur.
The Bloodstained Butterfly
Costume Design
When a young female student is savagely killed in a park during a thunderstorm, the culprit seems obvious: TV sports personality Alessandro Marchi, seen fleeing the scene of the crime by numerous eyewitnesses. The evidence against him is damning... but is it all too convenient? And when the killer strikes again while Marchi is in custody, it quickly becomes apparent that there's more to the case than meets the eye...
L'ultima volta che siamo stati bambini
Production Design