The Birds, the Bees and the (Displaced) Italians: Moretti Tries Amour For
In the latter half of his career, revered Italian director Nanni Moretti has developed a penchant for idealistic, often twee explorations of frantic connections, generally endearing his narratives to a polite, crowd pleasing mentality. He returns to adapt the works of author Eshkol Nevo with It Will Happen Tonight, using a Frankenstein method to intertwine a variety of characters and scenarios from various stories for a ‘love at first sight’ exploration adapted by Federica Pontremoli and Valia Santella, both who have worked with Moretti on several films. The result is what is to be expected from Moretti’s wry, old-fashioned sensibilities, a film besotted with the notion of love as a galvanizing force field. It’s a heavily romanticized worldview which certainly has been effectively conveyed on screen by many, but when it involves banal people making idiotic choices it’s difficult to feel invested in their nonsense.
Matteo (Louis Garrel) has been living in Oslo with his nineteen-year-old pregnant girlfriend Thea (Melina Akerman Kvie), but his mother (Angela Finocchiaro) insists they move back to Rome for familial support. Thea, however, never makes it out of the airport when landing in Italy. Greta (Jasmine Trinca) runs away from her boyfriend who is overseeing the implementation of a subway system in India, leaning on her father (Moretti) for moral support. Seven years pass. On Greta’s wedding day, a chance encounter on a tennis court with Matteo sends sparks flying between them. But life has other plans since Matteo’s father (Hippolyte Girardot) is dying. As a bucket list event, Matteo takes his dad to Spain for a Bruce Springsteen concert. Seven more years pass and Matteo, now a bookstore owner, stumbles into Greta, who has given up her desire to be an actress to direct children’s theater productions. A torrid affair, at long last, ensues. But are they willing to upend their comfortable lives to start anew together?
Fortunately, It Will Happen Tonight is vastly more palatable than Moretti’s previous Nevo adaptation, Three Floors (2021), and less arduously pompous than 2023’s A Brighter Tomorrow. That said, it hardly lives up to something like the Capra classic It Happened One Night (1934) despite potentially riffing with the title. Moretti seems to be playing with a Brief Encounter (1945) template, but ultimately one with no stakes, choosing to span segments of his characters’ lives as if they’re on The Seven Year Itch (1955) plan. The chemistry between Garrel and Trinca is jaunty enough, and there are snatches of effervescence which work, such as a kiss separated by a car window, or a so-cheesy-it-works aside set to The Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow.”
Where It Will Happen Tonight really fails is through the schlocky, sentimental supporting characters orbiting Matteo and Greta, like a late period Claude Lelouch smorgasbord of zany composites. Moretti visualizes the throes of romantic excitement like a manic phase modeled after Roberto Benigni, and Garrel’s antics are a far cry from the delicate scenarios Christophe Honore once crafted for him, such as Les Chansons d’Amour (2007). Garrel does fare better considering the narrative favors his perspective. Matteo’s actions are what propel the romance, leaving Greta to be a tortured object of desire.
Trinca is a likable screen presence, at times reminiscent of someone like Donna Reed. A side plot of Greta’s nascent career as an actress generates the film’s most ridiculous sequence where she basically shuts down production twice while in Spain (and wearing old age make-up like Coleen Gray in The Leech Woman, 1950). Her questionable methods of mothering are also pure cornball hackery, suggesting her loveless marriage is why she cannot properly handle her first born daughter Anna (who, as a child, is portrayed as something like Damien from The Omen, 1976). The script strays far away from the possibility that Matteo is merely an impetus for her to change rather than the soulmate she’s intended to be with.
Moretti stuffs a few too many characters and complications into their scattered lives than seems necessary, such as the Norwegian mother of Matteo’s first child, his ailing father (a perplexingly cast Hippolyte Girardot as a mischievous lothario), his dementia suffering mother, and his lovely weirdo of a wife (an under-utilized Elena Lietti). And as far as Greta’s brood, we barely learn anything about her husband, much less the man she initially abandoned in India. Moretti seems to bear disdain for the kooky or the modern (which explains why Miranda July, of all people, catches some stray bullets), but so much of this narrative plays like rosy-tinted claptrap from a bygone era. Like an obligatory offering of tiramisu in many an Italian restaurant, It Will Happen Tonight is a chalky, sugary concoction that tastes nice enough but suffers from staleness. As the couple enters into their second decade of romantic delay, one wonders why neither has bothered to ask, ‘what’s love got to do with it?’
Reviewed on September 5th at the 2026 Venice Film Festival (83rd edition) – In Competition. 103 Minutes.
★★/☆☆☆☆☆
