Nanni Moretti
Bianca (1984)

The title might be misleading. And perhaps Nanni Moretti chose it precisely as an antithesis to the subject matter (black if not pitch black) of the film: it should be clear that this movie is not a thriller, but rather a hallucinatory fairy tale, in which the ordinary is dismantled by the extraordinary, incredibly plausible. The best Moretti? Perhaps he's very close.

Michele Apicella is, this time, a mathematics professor newly arrived in Rome, teaching at an improbable high school named after Marilyn Monroe, where the teachers' lounge is a well-stocked arcade, and on the walls, instead of the president of the republic, the sports idols of the recent world victory loom large. He lives in a building, in an apartment with a terrace from which he spies (with morbid curiosity) on the lives of his neighbors, especially couples. He appears to us as a neurotic professor, a cleanliness freak, capable of guessing a person's character from the shoes they wear, but above all attentive (he has set up a filing system!) to ensure that the couples' relationships of neighbors, friends, and students are sincere, last without hitches, and can be controlled by him.

It’s "the same old story" of a man who watches life go by until someone forces him to take part in it, to venture into the terrible game of human relationships. This someone is Bianca (Laura Morante, who to tell the truth wasn't all that beautiful), also new to the Marylin high school, who falls in love—not a lightning strike but a very powerful diesel—with the inquisitive Prof. Apicella, and this nascent love is immediately cemented from the outside, in appearances, by the definitive judgment ("they are together") of the colleagues. Michele Apicella immediately shows all his inadequacy to love and moreover suffers from a very acute form of retroactive jealousy. But while Michele tries to cool down the love Bianca offers him, she behaves in a completely opposite way and seems unwavering in her feelings. And when her Michele is questioned by the Police Commissioner regarding a series of murders in the neighborhood, Bianca does not hesitate to provide false testimony just to get her Michele back, who has been preventatively jailed. Surprise ending (I'm no Hitchcock capable of concealing it, even if in prose, until the end; sorry if it has been guessed)

The speech on Mont Blanc is now part of the collective cinematic quotations, but what impresses is how the numerous moments of comedy are perfectly nestled within the folds of the script and don't stray off course; rather, precisely because of the film's gloominess, they acquire a surplus of meaning rarely seen except in some of Woody Allen's films. Saying that Nanni Moretti is Italy's answer to Woody Allen seems unnecessary to me, even though both have consistently offered more or less the same stereotype throughout their careers, slightly autobiographical, melancholically neurotic, but the differences are too many: Woody Allen is a technically better director and a more agile storyteller. Nanni Moretti has always remained tied to a professional way of making amateur films, though with creations worthy of the best masters. And then Moretti has on his side that particular way of pitching his voice in his logorrheic outbursts which by now are signature pieces.

Only one doubt remains at the end of the film: but that little girl who keeps sleeping, will she wake up/is she going to be awakened/would she have been awoken? (difficult to conjugate a verb for a time that doesn't exist or exists only virtually)

P.S. Franco Piersanti, the composer of the soundtrack, is indicated as Morricone's heir.... it fits!