It Will Happen Tonight pulls off a very difficult trick: it takes a story of infidelity and makes it exceptionally romantic. This is a huge surprise, because obviously you really shouldn’t be going around falling in love with people who aren’t the ones you married. But everyone knows the heart wants what it wants, and Louis Garrel and Jasmine Trinca somehow make this absolutely delightful. Writer-director Nanni Moretti, a juggernaut of Italian cinema whose amuse bouches do not always succeed, has smashed it out of the park here. He has been unwell so there’s some concern this will be his last hurrah, but if so it’s a great one, with a story about mistakes, misadventures, and all the other messes that make up a life to boot.
In 2017 or so, Matteo (Mr. Garrel) has convinced his younger partner Thea (Melina Åkerman Kvie) to move from her home city of Oslo to his home city of Rome, only for her to change her mind – and walk away from their infant son – at the last possible second. At the same time Greta (Ms. Trinca) is in Mumbai because of her boyfriend’s career, but when she rejects his public marriage proposal she comes back to Rome as well. But they do not meet until 2024, when Matteo and his brother are playing tennis at a club where a wedding reception is also happening. The bride happens to be Greta, and she comes over and plays a quick game against Matteo in her wedding dress. She then laughs and goes back to her life, but Matteo is enchanted, and never forgets.
A few months later he is in Spain, taking his unwell ladies-man father Olivier (Hippolyte Girardot) to a Bruce Springsteen concert as a last hurrah. Here the review must pause to inform you all that 1) they did film the concert from the stadium floor, a compliment Mr. Springsteen rarely allows, and 2) Olivier and Matteo are late to the concert because Olivier was shagging the hotel receptionist. During the trip Matteo also bumps into Greta, an actress in full costume and old-age makeup but also freaking out because her daughter has disappeared. Don’t worry, the little girl is soon safely found, but Greta is so upset about it that she walks away from her acting career. Her main friend and confidant is her father (Mr. Moretti), who takes the somewhat unusual parenting tack of imploring his daughter to always trust her own instincts and put her own happiness first. And meanwhile Matteo, seeing Greta again even looking like an old lady, has the shocking realisation that he is in love for the first time in his life.
But they do not meet again until 2031, by which time Matteo is married to Cristina (Elena Lietti), the nice doctor who took such good care of Olivier in his final days. He owns a bookstore that is doing very well there in the future (yay!) and his teenage son is implausibly perfect, while Greta teaches acting to little kids and worries about her own slightly less perfect children and her long-stale marriage. In a coffee shop Matteo approaches Greta with the thrilled smile of someone whose dream has just come true, while Greta barely remembers the man with whom she shared a spontaneous few moments on her wedding day. But there’s something about Matteo – Mr. Garrel plays the lovesick fool exactly right – and pretty soon they are meeting up whenever possible in Olivier’s old apartment, wondering what to do about all of this.
Lots of people, for whom cheating is the worst of all sins, will have clicked off by now, saying the answer is nothing. Others, who think life is considerably more nuanced than that, will enjoy seeing two people knocked over by unexpected love later in life. Do they discard the good lives which they’ve built for each other? Is their kids’ stability a price worth paying for their own happiness? It’s happiness indeed, as a street dance sequence to “She’s a Rainbow” by The Rolling Stones makes perfectly clear. And it’s just so kind and charming that viewers will be swept away, just as an unexpected love affair can do to the most ordinarily ordered life. This is not a movie for children who imagine that life always provides a single easy answer. It’s one for adults, who have learned the hard way how fragile and difficult real happiness is, and will do anything to make it last as long as possible. It Will Happen Tonight is so sweet and charming – even without the Springsteen interlude – that you want everyone in it to get what they want, maybe especially even if it’s more than they deserve. It might be the final fantasy of an old man grasping at straws but if you’re on its wavelength you’ll leave the cinema beaming from ear to ear. And from a movie, as from life, who could ask for anything more?
It Will Happen Tonight recently played at the Venice Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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