It Will Happen Tonight tries to assemble fragments of a family into a poetic romance, but the result is no more interesting than a clichéd trope with poor execution.
Written by Xiaoyi Wang
Loosely based on the short story collection Hungry Heart by Eshkol Nevo, Nanni Moretti’s It Will Happen Tonight is not the emotional, intimate, and honest rom-com it sets out to be. Instead, it takes the star-crossed lovers trope and executes it more like a soap opera. The film fails to create any real emotional connection to the characters for the audience, while its story falls flat and predictable…
The film’s opening takes place on two sides of the world. In Oslo, young Matteo (Louis Garrel) and his 19-year-old pregnant girlfriend, Thea (Melina Åkerman Kvie), have just had a terrible dispute with his mother (Angela Finocchiaro), who obnoxiously points out that Thea is not ready to be a mother. In India, Greta (Jasmine Trinca) is being proposed to by her partner on a corporate rooftop. She hesitates, then decides to walk away amid the applause. As she walks the streets of India, she calls her father to meet her at the airport, wondering about her life and her relationship over a glass of wine.
Only seven years later do their paths cross for real. The now-single father Matteo meets Greta on her wedding day to another man, when she unexpectedly walks into his tennis game and asks to play a match. He loses, of course. Head over heels in love, Matteo’s heart is now destined to spend a lifetime thinking about her. The film consists of a series of destined encounters between the right people at the wrong time. Seven more years go by, and Matteo, now a bookshop owner, meets Greta again. This time, they are finally able to have a real conversation, so he spills out all his feelings and fantasies of their life together over an afternoon at a café.
As their relationship deepens, things get sticky… Greta is still married with kids, and Matteo is also in a relationship. Thus, the film leads them into a messy and intense affair as they struggle with whether or not to commit to each other.
It is highlighted over and over again that if something is meant to be, then it will happen eventually. In this case, their love. But this does not mean anything can happen without a convincing framework for the audience. The thing about adultery in a film is that their relationship must have an intense grip on the audience, as well as a convincing emotional framework, if the audience is expected to root for them. In this case, Greta has a loving husband and three children, while Matteo is in a stable relationship with a partner and has a child of his own. Nothing justifies their affair except that they "love" each other. But all you feel is that this is, at most, a crush, and that they are simply irresponsible adults.
The film tries to assemble fragments of a family into a poetic romance, but the result is no more interesting than a clichéd trope with poor execution. The story is entirely lacking in believability because it is not fantastical enough to transport us into a dreamlike scenario for all of their encounters. When it comes to pacing, you expect something to happen to justify the dragged-out sequences, only to be disappointed.
The one thing that really upset me was how the time jumps were presented. This is a key element that chapters the film, repeated multiple times throughout, and yet it is represented by bland white text on a black background, without enough shots to establish the new and changed environment for us (except for some hairstyle and moustache changes). The first time was fine, but by the third, it became rather exhausting.
This is part of why the writing felt inauthentic. The film focuses more on Matteo, who is basically another stereotypical male artsy, literary lover. His father, who sleeps with women left and right, is even more so. If the male characters are already one-dimensional, well, the female characters in this film are even more so. They are often objectified or make decisions that are frankly unreasonable. The female side characters are positioned as obstacles or sources of conflict on our protagonist’s road to romance, while Greta is mainly reduced to a muse of desire.
I can see why Moretti would focus on fragments of the couple’s relationship and life. There is potential for an incredibly tender, emotional, and poetic work. But I found the subplot of Greta’s relationship with her depressed daughter much more interesting; I almost hoped that it would become the centre of the film instead of the sloppy romance. In the story, this subplot is only used as a reason for the two lovers to be unable to meet each other, which is a real shame because it offers such a rare opportunity to see Greta as something other than a paramour. Greta is a mother, genuinely concerned with her daughter, willing to sit night and day outside her room patiently for her daughter to come out during a particularly difficult episode. This family moment gave Greta such a dimension that is regrettably erased by the affair.
I so deeply hoped for this film to be a lovely and light rom-com dipped in poetry, to have a fun time at the festival, but unfortunately, it did not deliver…
It Will Happen Tonight premiered in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival on September 5th, and will have its Internationla premiere at TIFF on September 16th.
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