I'm Starting from Three

An Italian film about a man who goes from Naples to Florence. Gaetano is thirty and can decide nothing. Everyone in the neighbourhood knows him, everyone interferes in his life and he can say no to none of them. One day he leaves. North, to Florence. On the way and once he arrives everyone asks him the same question: have you come looking for work. Gaetano corrects them every time; he is not looking for work, he is travelling. That insistence is the film's most repeated joke and there is a serious matter under it: anyone from the south is automatically taken for a migrant labourer. In Florence he meets a woman. A relationship begins and again he cannot decide: stay, go back, marry. The humour comes from the way people speak. Sentences are left unfinished, the characters do not listen to each other and much of the dialogue is improvised. Massimo Troisi wrote, directed and starred. It is his first film and was an unexpected success in Italy, among the highest-earning domestic productions of its time. Fiorenza Marchegiani and Lello Arena are in the cast. An original production for anyone interested in Italian comedy and the tension between north and south. For a viewer watching with subtitles, much of the humour depends on the Neapolitan dialect and is lost in translation. Who it is for: anyone who likes character comedy and the tempo of talk. Who it is not for: anyone looking for plot; the film builds no story and watches one man's indecision.