Happy Family

Academy award-winning veteran director Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo) delivers a colourful tongue-in-cheek comedy about a writer holed up in his apartment in Milan one hot summer trying to punch out a story while the characters come to life around him offering their input on the direction they think the story should take.

Recently dumped screenwriter Ezio (Fabio De Luigi, Many Kisses Later IFF2009) is having trouble writing a story about two neurotic families whose paths cross when their teenage children, Filipo and Marta, decide to marry. The family members - Filipo's parents (played by scene-stealer Fabrizio Bentivoglio and the magnificent Margherita Buy) and Marta's parents (the remarkable Diego Abatantuono and Carla Sinoris) – arrange to have dinner to meet for the first time, with hilarious consequences. Ezio soon writes himself into his script, and into a love story, while the characters bother him about having bigger and better roles!

Gorgeously shot, playfully acted and energetically paced, Salvatores tips his hat to the film's origins on stage (co-scripter Alessandro Genovesi helped adapt his own successful play) with opening shots of a stage curtain, preparing the audience for the theatrical interplay to come.