Veteran auteur Nanni Moretti – who has had nine movies in competition at Cannes — is back in Venice after 37 years with “It Will Happen Tonight,” a romantic drama toplining French star Louis Garrel and Italian A-lister Jasmine Trinca (“La Storia,” “Supersex”).
“Years ago I had coined this slightly stupid phrase that I used to say at press conferences: ‘I want to keep making the same film; but possibly make it more beautiful each time,'” Moretti said, after being greeted warmly at the film’s presser. Then, as time progressed, the director said he decided he wanted to try new things. This time, with his screenwriters, Valia Santella and Federica Pontremoli, “we imagined a pretty powerful love story,” Moretti said.
Romance, in terms of genre, is a first for the idiosyncratic director who has often constructed his films around his own persona, appearing as the central character. Starting with his 1976 Super-8 debut “Io Sono un’Autarchico” and its follow-up, “Ecce Bombo,” which humorously captured the discontent gripping Italy in the bleak 1970s, and, of course, the autobiografical “Caro Diario,” 1994, which marked his international breakthrough. Moretti subsequent standout works comprise his 2001 Palm d’Or winning bereavement drama “The Son’s Room,” the scathing 2006 Silvio Berlusconi satire “The Caiman” and “We Have a Pope” in which he depicted a Pontiff’s crisis of faith.
