The film recounts an experience, that of a director and his two actors at grips with a play: from the first meeting to the initial readings, the rehearsals done at home, the ones done on stage and finally the first performance. But an experience that took place in the peculiar situation in which the whole of Italian culture found itself in the days between the first and second wave of the pandemic, when it really seemed possible to restart and the feeling of euphoria was accompanied by the illusion that the worst was behind us. Once again we were suddenly checked in our desire for beauty, for life.
In the opening scene we are witness to an old man’s lament about a world he no longer understands. Subsequent sequences gradually introduce us to various inhabitants of an unspecified southern Italian village and to the many bizarre situations in which the characters of the three vaguely adumbrated stories appear. Although some of them meet on a daily basis, the viewer receives scant information about their relationships, let alone their lives, and with no plot context. Nevertheless, the tone generated by the artfully composed shots and musical accompaniment suggests something inauspicious, even subliminally disturbing. The film, the script of which earned director Caputo the Mattador International Screenwriting Award, seeks to explore the typical Italian provincial world where the effort to be new and modern clashes with a commitment to deeply rooted traditions.
