Cosi

Lewis is a young theatre director out of work. He is hired to put on a play with patients at a psychiatric hospital in Sydney. What he expects is something simple. But Roy, one of the patients, wants something else: they will stage Mozart's Così fan tutte. Nobody can sing, nobody speaks Italian, and the institution gives them nothing. Lewis tries to get out of it and then goes in. As the rehearsals go on, both the patients and Lewis start weighing up their own lives. Mark Joffe directs the Australian film; a hundred and two minutes, with Ben Mendelsohn as Lewis and Barry Otto as Roy, and Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths in the cast. It is adapted from Louis Nowra's play; Nowra wrote the screenplay too, and the play came out of a job he had as a young man.