Tre Piani, Isolated Lives at Festival de Cannes

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The sixth day of competition at the Festival de Cannes saw the screening of Tre Piani by Nanni Moretti and Bergman Island by Mia Hansen-Love.

After Mia Madre in 2015, Italian director, screenwriter and actor Giovanni (Nanni) Moretti, who loves to mix real episodes from his life with a fictional story in his “autofictions”, presents Tre Piani, a feature film inspired this time by a novel. For her first film in competition, Bergman Island, Mia Hansen-Løve presents the strange story of a couple of filmmakers searching for the ghost of Ingmar Bergman during a stay on the mysterious island of Fårö, where the famous director lived.

Nanni Moretti © fandango/sacher film / Nanni Moretti

Gallery of isolated lives

Tre Piani is a fiction film adapted from the novel of the same name by Israeli author Eshkol Nevo, featuring a gallery of characters played by great Italian actors. The “three floors” are those of a building in the Roman suburbs where three distinct families live, whose lives are disrupted by a series of events that radically transform their existence.

Prisoners of their own stubbornness

Lucio (Riccardo Scamarcio) is a father worried about his seven-year-old daughter. Monica (Alba Rohrwacher), a mother-to-be whose husband spends long periods abroad, is consumed by loneliness, and Andrea (Alessandro Sperduti) is a young man in his twenties whose life is turned upside down after a night of drinking. Nanni Moretti plays Vittorio, a magistrate who can no longer communicate with his son. While the men, as always, remain prisoners of their own stubbornness, the women try, each in their own way, to mend minds and lives through love.

In contention for a second Palme d’Or

Winner of the Palme d’Or in 2001 with The Son’s Room, Nanni Moretti’s work alternates between drama, satire and militancy, all served up with a wry sense of humour. The filmmaker, a major figure in European cinema, had already won the Prix de la mise en Scène in 1994 for Diary (an autobiographical account of his battle with cancer). With Tre Piani, he tackles universal themes such as the consequences of our choices, the responsibilities of parenthood, and the guilt that comes with it when we feel we have failed in our task.

Ingmar Bergman’s shadow

Twelve years after The Father of My Children, presented at Certain Regard, French director Mia Hansen-Løve enters the Competition with Bergman Island, featuring a filmmaking couple, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth), who spend a summer on the island of Fårö, which is haunted by the shadow of the Swedish filmmaker who lived there. As the script is written, it becomes reality on screen.