罗马,夏日,一队穿梭其中的游客。这座美得令人窒息的古老城池,正以一种神秘而冷艳的姿态诱惑着他们,让人心甘情愿地被这份精致得令人绝望的美丽所俘获,沉醉其中。然而在捷普·甘巴尔代拉(托尼·瑟维洛 Toni Servillo 饰)眼中,罗马却是一座寂寞之都。65岁的捷普是一名成功记者,风度翩翩、魅力十足。年轻时代撰写的一本文学作品让他在早年就名利双收。他辗转在各样肆意妄为的奢靡与觥筹交错的社交之中,用一双冷酷到几近麻木的双眼,目睹这座绝美之城背后的空虚与隐秘。当女高音的咏叹调再次响起,游走在平民生活与上层社会之间的捷普,开始重拾那些逝去的青春记忆,只有罗马之城仍依旧着她的冷漠与华美,不曾改变。
Facing a long winter of lockdown and combating a bad case of writer’s block, filmmaker Eric agrees to get a dog with his girlfriend Allie. A modern couple – vegan, ethical, millennial, neurotic – much research and negotiation leads to the arrival of Milly, a rescue from the Dominican Republic. This sets off a riotous chain of new challenges on how to best deal with this addition to the household. As Eric contends with a sinister dog-training programme, his introspection spills out onto his film work, with poor Allie and Milly taken along for the ride. The couple each pursue their own deepheld individual questions surrounding trust, purpose and roots, while wrestling with the idea of what it means to be a modern family. Milly, in the meantime, has a lot on her paws with these two!
Part rom-com, part rescue-dog story, part autofiction, part self-indictment, part family scrapbook, this debut feature was made with remarkable economy and displays a disquieting amount of (often hilarious) emotional authenticity. Filmmaker Ben Petrie and creative collaborator Grace Glowicki play the young couple and in doing so, capture nothing less than what it means to be human.