L'ultimo bacio

Italy

Synopsis

Francesca is eighteen. She falls in love with Carlo who is thirty and is about to marry Giulia, twenty-seven, romantic and idealist, daughter of Anna, age fifty and married for twenty-nine years, afraid of getting old and resigning herself to the fact that her youth is over. Forever.

Here are their stories:
Anna, age fifty. Her marriage to Emilio has been in a crisis for a long time. She has always let herself be protected by a patriarchal marriage that she now sees all the limits of She feels unsatisfied, unhappy, unable to accept her age and feels that her Sensuality is gone forever, and with it the chance of going crazy for someone and beginning something that is still overwhelming and passionate.
But she doesn't want to give in, and tries to meet someone else - A man who can help her to still be swept away by passions, senses, the strong need not to be considered an "old" and useless woman. After her failure in an encounter with Michete, aplastic surgeon recently separated from his wife, she starts seeing Antoine again, her lover from years earlier and who she broke off with in a vain attempt to save her marriage.
Yet even the encounter with Antoine turns out to be "out of date". She feels useless, removed from the situation that up to a few years earlier saw her as sensual and inspiring.
After wasting away, alter having shed tears for being unable to find a place where she feels sheltered, she goes back to her husband, Emilio, tries to open herself up and understand if there is still something that can be done to save their marriage. A way of learning how to grow old together, a way to accept each other and give new worth to at least a part of those years spent together. So they try to start off from a mutual meeting point. Emilio admits his responsibilities, his laziness, his conjugal carelessness. He admits that for years he concentrated only on himself and let their best years drift by. Yet they are not beyond the time limit. They won't be as long as they live. For twenty more years, maybe thirty. Maybe even more. And now maybe they can rebuild the understanding that disappeared because it was killed by routine, by the years that started passing by all in the same way.
Anna and Emilio embrace and hold on tight. They ask each other the‘meaning of so much suffering, the meaning of their betrayal, the meaning of so much carelessness. They are interrupted by a phone call. It is their daughter Giulia who teils them that she is coming home. Her voice is broken with tears.

Let's see what has happened to Giulia earlier on:
Giulia is twenty-seven. Carlo twenty-nine. They have been going together for three years and are now expecting a baby. They mutually agreed not to get married, because the institution of marriage is in crisis, because there isn't much sense in getting married when you are already living together.
Everything seems to be going for the best.
We enter the intimate side of their life, discover that the appearance is different from the reality. Carlo has a diabolic hold on his double life with her.
He lives his imminent entry into "real life" with anguish, the life of adults with a family, irreversible responsibilities, commitments to be kept for life. But Giulia suspects nothing of this crisis of his.

Director's Biography

1999 COME TE NESSUNO MAI
1999 GLI AMICI DI SA.RA
1998 THAT'S IT
1997 MAX PLAYS THE PIANO
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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Gabriele Muccino

Written by: Giovanna Mezzogiorno

Produced by: Domenico Procacci

Cinematography: Marcello Montarsi

Editing: Claudio di Mauro

Production Design: Eugenia F. di Napoli

Costume Design: Nicoletta Ercole

Original Score: Paolo Buonvino

Cast: Giorgio Pasotti (Adriano), Giovanna Mezzogiorno (Giulia), Sergio Castellitto (Prof. Eugenio Bonetti), Stefano Accorsi (Carlo), Lina Bernardi (Adele), Stefania Sandrelli (Anna), Martina Stella (Francesca), Pierfrancesco Favino (Marco), Claudio Santamaria (Paolo), Vittorio Amandola (Mimmo), Sabrina Impacciatore (Livia)

Nominations and Awards

  • European Actress 2001
  • Feature Film Selection 2001