Palme d’Or-winning writer-director of _The Son’s Room _ returns with an adaptation of Israeli novelist Eshkol Nevo’s ‘Three Floors Up’.
The drama opens with the son of a judge drunkenly killing a pedestrian then crashing into a neighbour’s apartment. Andrea (Alessandro Sperduti) is admonished by his judge father (Moretti), who would like to see him jailed. But his mother (Margherita Buy, the star of Moretti’s previous Mia Madre) fights to show the boy’s better side, even though he shows no remorse. Across the street, a young working class couple (Riccardo Scamarcio and Elena Lietti) fall out with their elderly neighbours (Paolo Graziosi and Anna Bonaiuto) following an incident when the ageing couple were looking after their daughter. And further complications between the couples are to come.
Fully embracing the high emotional tone of a classic melodrama, Moretti’s film is a panorama of life in a small-knit community. The various storylines weave a portrait that simmers with resentment, class prejudice and highlight the gender disparity in Italy, where machismo still runs rife and women are judged by a different measure.
