Writers: Nanni Moretti, Eshkol Nevo and Federica Pontremoli
Director: Nanni Moretti
Romcoms normally end in the airport but Nanni Moretti’s new film It Will Happen Tonight screening at the BFI London Film Festival, begins there with Italian man Matteo bringing the Norwegian mother of his child back to Italy so his family can meet their new son. Abandoning him in that moment what follows is a story of love and destiny, taking place over 10 years as people move through different relationships and phases of their life, a life that as John Lennon observed, gets in the way of their true desires. Moretti’s film, co-written with Eshkol Nevo and Federica Pontremoli, begins to strain against its concept though, failing to develop sufficient chemistry between its leads to generate such a long and sustained period of devotion.
Matteo and his girlfriend have a son, they break up, he falls for a bride who he meets fleetingly on her wedding day to someone else, then has a long relationship with a doctor but continually pursuing the women he hopes to meet again, all while dealing with his ageing father. Meanwhile, the bride Greta, has married, has further children and tries to build her acting career while resisting the strange man who keeps crossing her path.
Moretti’s film takes the story on some long digressions and in its attempts to be realistic about the obligations and distractions that take people towards and away from each other, builds lots of relationships that never really go anywhere. A long segment for Matteo revolves around his father and a visit to Germany to a Bruce Springsteen concert, using actual footage, which could offer some greater analysis of Matteo’s feelings about love and sex, how infatuation with the early stages of relationships is worn down by familiarity with the women he quickly becomes bored with. Instead, Moretti shows the father having a Viagra-induced session with a hotel receptionist, talking of his need to embrace life but never fully admitting that his son is perhaps as flighty and uncommitted as him.
This is because, Matteo (Louis Garrel) is supposed to be the hero and anyone watching is just supposed to believe he hasn’t met the right woman – or at least that the right woman is Greta who is barely known to him. Although this is heavily grounded in the distractions of their real lives, it becomes harder to believe that Matteo is a good guy, a tension that the film never resolves as he engages in several long-committed relationships with women who eventually fall by the wayside. But he doesn’t feel like a good guy, just a serial monogamist happy to break up two marriages – one with young kids – for some exciting sex on the side.
The presentation of Greta (Jasmine Trinca) is more appealing, obviously torn between her love of her family and her husband, seeing the affair for what it is rather than their destiny. Perhaps there are just too many films and television series that glamorise cheating and dress it up as true love, and however long they wait to be together Moretti, Nevo and Pontremoli’s characters never convince you that they belong together or that their version of love will either last beyond its first flush or is worth the wreckage that the film hides from view.
It Will Happen Tonight is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2026 from 7-18 October.
