I Thought It Was Love

Tommaso and Cecilia in Naples have been together for years. They split, reconcile, split again. Finally they decide to marry, and that is where the question starts: is two people loving each other enough for them to live together. Massimo Troisi directed and played Tommaso. Francesca Neri plays Cecilia, with Marco Messeri and Angelo Orlando. Troisi wrote the script with Anna Pavignano, his former partner. This is the last film Troisi directed. Three years later he finished shooting Il Postino with a damaged heart and died a day after the production wrapped. The calesse of the title, a horse-drawn carriage, reads like a joke, but Troisi explained it: the ordinary everyday object that gets in the way at the moment love fails to deliver what was expected. The film is almost entirely talk, and the humour lives in Troisi's hesitant, self-correcting Neapolitan speech. Who it is for: lovers of Italian relationship comedy and of Troisi. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events; this is two people talking from start to finish.