Three Floors

Nanni Moretti returns with a set of intertwined family dramas that recalls a TV soap opera.

Although Three Floors is an adaptation of a popular novel, watching this film puts one in mind of a different form of mass entertainment, the TV series as epitomised in Britain by Coronation Street. These works utilise their format by concentrating on a relatively large group of characters and then weave various story threads around them. It is less a case of finding a plot and buttressing it with subplots than of putting the main characters into situations which can be expanded or developed as the storylines shift around - unless, of course, the writers decide that a particular aspect has had its time and should be dropped. This is a format well suited to weekly viewing over months or even years. Indeed, it is designed to prompt chatter amongst its viewers whenever an episode ends on an unexpected note, just as it encourages speculation as to what the future of its characters is likely to be. But good cinema is something else again and the comparison prompted by the intertwined tales that make up Three Floors is evidence in itself that this is not a film of real quality.

That is not to say that Three Floors is entirely devoid of merit: it is very competently acted, the switch in location to Italy (the novel from which it was adapted had Tel Aviv as its setting) is no drawback and it is smoothly directed by Nanni Moretti who also acts in it. For some two hours we follow the lives of the inhabitants of a three-storey building (hence the title) and no less than four families are involved.

We start with Vittorio and Dora (Nanni Moretti and Margherita Buy) whose teenage son, Andrea (Alessandro Sperduti) causes the death of a woman when driving while drunk and hopes that his father, a judge, will use his influence when it comes to the court case. But the couple who dominate the film’s first half are Lucio (Riccardo Scamarcio) and Sara (Elena Lietti) who have a seven-year-old daughter, Francesca (an excellent performance here by Chiara Abalsamo).  From time to time the child is left in the care of elderly neighbours, Renato (Paolo Graziosi) and Giovanna (Anna Bonaiuto). However, the aged Renato is suffering from dementia and one night he goes missing with Francesca. Jumping to conclusions, Lucio comes to believe that the old man who had been found in a park with Francesca had abused her. As for the fourth couple, Giorgio (Adriano Giannini) is often away from home and is even absent when Monica (Alba Rohrwacher) gives birth to their first child. Afterwards she starts to suffer from hallucinations and shows signs of depression.

If, initially, each family seems to have a particular tale attached, the storylines that are set up take on additional aspects in time just as the narrative itself divides into three sections set in 2010, 2015 and 2020 respectively. Thus Lucio’s story develops to include his seduction by Charlotte (Denise Tantucci), a youngster who is Renato's granddaughter, the drama of Andrea's crime increasingly becomes a study of his relationship with his parents and in Monica's case the rivalry between her husband and his brother (Stefano Dionisi) proves significant. Although Moretti first made his mark in cinema as the writer/director and star of idiosyncratic comedies, his greatest achievement to date is a work of a very different kind, The Son’s Room (2001). That film was centred on family life and those familiar with it will inevitably notice how inferior the writing by Moretti and others is in this case. The ways in which the various tales develop often seem to lack the detail that would make them convincing and, when it comes to the final section set in 2020, there is a sense of a formulaic approach in the winding up of the stories as well as touches of banality. On its own terms Three Floors may be considered watchable, but it is far below the standard of which Moretti is capable and it never throws off the sense that television is its natural home. There it might also have gained from being more expansive and worked through and, indeed, the time jumps would be more appropriate if the events of 2010 had provided the first series followed eventually by a second series covering 2015 and a final set for 2020.

Original title: Tre piani.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Margherita Buy, Alba Rohrwacher, Adriano Giannini, Elena Lietti, Nanni Moretti, Denise Tantucci. Alessandro Sperduti, Anna Bonaiuto, Paolo Graziosi, Tommaso Ragno, Stefano Dionisi, Chiara Abalsamo, Giulia Coppari, Gea Dall’Orto, Alice Adamo, Letizia Arno.

Dir Nanni Moretti, Pro Nanni Moretti and Domenico Procacci, Screenplay Nanni Moretti, Federica Pontremoli and Valia Santella from the novel by Eshkol Nevo, Ph Michele D’Attanasio, Pro Des Paola Bizzarri, Ed Clelio Benevento, Music Franco Piersanti, Costumes Valentina Taviani.

Sacher Film/Fandango/Rai Cinema/Le Pacte/Canal+/Ciné+-Modern Films.
120 mins. Italy/France. 2021. UK Rel: 18 March 2022. Cert. 18.