Ricomincio da tre - 1981

Restored. A film written and directed by Troisi. Music by Pino Daniele.

Well, it’s a film with Troisi so you know how it is, melancholic music, slow scenes, sentences that never get finished, …

Gaetano leaves his friends and everything behind when he moves to Firenze to stay with his aunt Antonia. He says that this time he will leave for real, he’s tired, he says he wants to start back , start from 3, not from scratch (or zero, as we say) but from three, because some things are good and he wants to keep them. He has a family, he has friends, he even has a job.

He has no plan, we see him hitchhiking and being given a ride by a man who wants to kill himself, so instead it’s Gaetano who drives him to the mental hospital. He meets Marta there, and he likes her. He sees her again, and asks him about the guy, so they talk about suicides.

He finds out his aunt, who he was staying with, has a relationship with a professor, so he leaves her house and stays in Frank’s apartment. Frank is American, not exactly a preacher but he goes to talk to people, something like that.

Marta tells him he acts like he wants to win her over, and he denies it, she wonders if he likes her, and he jumps up and tells her no, or yes, but like a sister…

Hs friend Lello comes to visit from Napoli. After hours of looking for a hotel, Gaetano would like to go out with Marta, but Lello has an accident so he goes to see him at the hospital (hospital… nobody around, a kind nun in white, everybody comfortably in their bed… nothing like the hospital I’ve seen…)

Marta talks to Gaetano about his shyness and always being hesitant, then she offers him to spend the night, since it’s already 2am. She is the one to take the initiative, since he wouldn’t have been able to , she blames his lack of self-confidence. Gaetano moves in with her.

Everybody, upon hearing that he’s from Napoli, asks him if he’s an immigrant; this annoys him a bit, because he says he had a job before, he simply decided he wanted to travel…

Gaetano always keeps his real thoughts to himself, just like he never confessed that he really liked her, he pretends he’s not jealous at all, and when she tells him she slept with someone else, he doesn’t say anything, pretends like he’s not jealous and doesn’t care, but he does. She insists she loves him, though, and when she thinks she’s pregnant, she says she’s not 100% sure who the father is, but she wants to have the baby with Gaetano because she loves him. 

At first he’s rather upset by this, but they talk and he has a bit of time to think, and then he surprises her by talking about names, and she smiles when he suggests Ugo like his father, and then Ciro if she doesn’t like the other one. This means that he’s decided he loves her too and wants to raise the child with her.

Gaetano - Massimo Troisi

“Lello” Raffaele - Lello Arena

Marta - Fiorenza Marchegiani

Frankie - Vincent Gentile

Robertino - Renato Scarpa

Mental patient - Marco Messeri

Suicidal car driver - Michele Mirabella