Duration 96 minutes | Italy, France | Italian with English subtitles

In A Brighter Tomorrow, he is easy to love, starring and making ample fun of himself, playing a curmudgeonly film director who is so self-absorbed he has not noticed his wife drifting away. He is busy making a film that is an earnest challenge to ‘modern cinema’ with its empty commercialism and shallow ideas. He refuses to shoot violence; he is adamant about his principles, and he will not ‘sell out’. It makes me laugh out loud how self-parodying Moretti’s ‘Giovanni’ is. The outcome is a unique meta-film with a surprising amount of heart, intelligence, and self-deprecating laughs exploring the way the world changes around us as we grow.

Some clear staples of Moretti’s cinema have emerged and remained, but in myriad combinations: There’s his dynamic presence as an actor (and favorite protagonist); a jovially ironic style that tackles serious issues with the lightest touch; and a seeming fascination with sports, perhaps coming from his childhood love of water polo, which he manages to relate to the deepest of existential questions. (Those, of course, are often left unresolved.) 

It's not at all necessary to know Moretti’s back catalog to enjoy Il Sol del’Avvenire, but now is an excellent time to explore what makes Moretti special in Italian cinema. You’ll likely find that he delights and comforts as much as he questions the foundations of Italy — and of life itself — with a razor-sharp edge.

Moretti puts a playful spin on a director’s late-career crisis. The Palme d ’Or winner has got his groove back.

Peter Debruge. Variety