Life Is a Wonderful ThingMovies like Life Is a Wonderful Thing
- Key Features:
- Intertwined stories, Social commentary, Class differences, Romantic relationships, Infidelity, Financial trouble, Deception, Cop, Espionage, Love triangle
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Drama viewers, Art house cinema enthusiasts, Character-driven movie fans, Social issue film viewers
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Conflict → Reflection
Life Is a Wonderful Thing

A policeman who spies on the lives of others, an important banker married to a housewife who poses as a noblewoman. A precarious young masseuse and an electrician madly in love. Very different lives that end up intertwining. But also extremely complicated and troubled lives ... Even if, after all, life is a wonderful thing ...
Life Is a Wonderful Thing
The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.

Christmas holidays on the snow of Cortina D'Ampezzo. Mario, a guy from Rome who has not much money, falls in love with the American Samantha, the girlfriend of hypochondriac Roberto. Billo, a singer and a playboy, meets Ivana: she's married with a rich man, Donatone, but in the past she had a flirt with Billo, who wants to reignite the flame.

A common day in the actual Italy, narrated by the different stories of seven different people, it's the starting point for an overview to the 21st century's italian society, among corrupt politicians, unfaithful husbands, hardcore soccer fans and dishonest businessmen.

In an accident the young mechanic Marco Coccia meets Cristiana. The two fall in love with one another. Cristiana confesses only later that she is a genuine princess. For Marco it is not a problem, but for Cristiana's parents it is a very big problem. The two must separate. When one evening Cristiana calls Marco and lets him know about her forthcoming wedding, Marco with the car races toward Paris and has an accident...

Marco encounters his ex-girlfriend Consueloand starts seeing her without telling that he has just married. Antonio is an MP and during his European trip he has a love affair with elegant Olga who has a big secret to hide. Recently-jilted Fabio is mistaken for psychiatrist by a beautiful girl Valentina with whom he falls in love. A divorce lawyer Sandra is romantically attracted to her client's husband Massimo.

Three characters' misadventures in semi-deserted, summertime Rome: a dim-witted mama's boy falls for a tourist; a would-be womanizer struggles to find company for his sex tourism trip to Kraków; a hippie is drawn into his father's schemes to bring him back into polite society.

Construction worker Oreste and young fiancee Adelaide meet Nello, a cook in a pizzeria. This love triangle often goes to communist rallies, and enjoys the filthy beaches of Ostia. Will the hostile environment pave a way to jealousy?

Marco is married to a gorgeous woman, has a child and a great job. Everything seems perfect, at least until his wife of 25 years announces that she has another man and wants a separation. Marco is forced to leave home.

A group of middle-aged time-share investors get ripped off and their desire for revenge is well-timed for them to be recruited by a bank clerk who feels the same about his employers.

When Antonia's husband Massimo is killed in a car accident, she accidentally discovers that he has been having a same-sex affair with a produce wholesaler named Michele.

25-year-old philosophy major Marta faces the ugly truth for many young Italians — a complete lack of career opportunities. While babysitting for single mother Sonia, she starts to work as a telemarketer, experiencing first-hand the fanatical and exploitative rat-race culture pushed on employees while quickly rising through the ranks of the company. Around her revolve people like delusional supervisor Daniela, her womanizing boss Claudio, fragile coworker Lucio "2", and well-meaning but inconsistent union rep Giorgio.

Umberto Maria Durloni is a successful lawyer and a socialite who likes parties and a lavish life. He's got it all, except any ethical qualms.Only a step away from the top, his perfect world crumbles, showing him the brutal do downside to his life.

Carlo, a police officer, after intercepting a call conducts a drug bust at a private party at the upper class apartment of Rosanna Clerici and she is arrested. Just as the police and party guests are leaving, Giulio, Rosanna's six-year-old son, comes out of his room and asks Carlo where his mother is. Seeing that Carlo is the person responsible for his mother's arrest, Giulio tags along with him until his mother is freed. Carlo does everything possible to have Social Services or somebody look after the kid but is told by the Courts that he is the best candidate for his custody until a better one is found. Even though Giulio manages to turn Carlo's life inside out he ends up getting to like the kid and falling for the kid's mother, Rosanna, while she is in prison. It ends with Rosanna being released from prison and the three of them going out for dinner.

Guido and Antonia are a young couple with opposed characters and backgrounds. He works a night job as a doorman, while she works all day in a car rental service. This is the story of what happens when they decide to have a child.

Four married couples find out their marriage is invalid because it was officiated by a fraudulent priest and have to decide what to do next.

Ottone, a professional dog sitter who's uncertain about most things in life, asks an analyst if he made the right decision love-wise while recounting the significant relationships he had with four women.

A successful businessman whose destiny leads him to a secluded Swiss chalet where his life is put on trial by a group of retired law professionals. The men assemble to analyze Sordi's rise to power and his increasingly immoral behavior as he attained success, and the warped perceptions of right and wrong he has adopted to remain successful.

This coarse bedroom farce takes place at the St. Moritz ski resort over a Christmas vacation. Among the couples whose lives intersect are a widowed artist honeymooning with his second wife, a gay man traveling with his son and his lover (and hiding each from the other), a snobbish couple from Milan who have been forced to share a suite with a pair of crass Romans, etc.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

A wealthy broker, Federico Picchioni, within two days forfeits his partner and work, finishing well to living with two children and granddaughter (abandoned by her father). He is, at this point, in the face of many difficulties of adjustment but finds comfort in the help of his neighbor.

Lino lives in Turin with the family of his sister. He doesn't have a good job and never enough money. But in a day his life changes: he wins 1 billion dollars in a lottery and... everyone becomes a friend, the girl who he liked becomes his girlfriend and his sister begins to love him. He leaves Turin with his friend Parola and, in a casino, he loses all money! But luck returns...

An Italian doctor starts a new life in Kenya to escape the city, but life catches up with him when an old friend offers his assistance along with his wife, who happens to be an old lover.

Francesco and Claudia are best friends. They're inseparable and tell each other everything, until another man enters the picture stealing Claudia's heart. Francesco then realizes that friendship between man and woman is a complicated thing.

Gianni is sixty. He is retired but has not become lazy for all that. In fact he is a helpful fellow who gives a hand to all those who need one: shopping for his wife, walking the pretty neighbor's dog, and so on. Everybody likes Gianni, but is it for the right reasons? Doesn't his wife profit by the situation (she still works so it is only logical that Gianni do all the chores)? Isn't he subject to the excruciating whims of his rich mother?... Sure, everybody LIKES Gianni, but who LOVES him? Agreed, being kind to them, he is the ladies pet, but he does not attract them anymore. That is why, when his macho lawyer friend Alfonso blames him for not having young mistresses "like every other senior Italian male", Gianni, who is beginning to ask himself questions about what it is like to become old, starts chasing dames.

Willy, Giacomo, Lorenzo and Sandro are 4 young yuppies rampant in the "Milano da bere" of the 80s, who live in the myth of Lawyer Gianni Agnelli and Silvio Berlusconi; their only purpose in life is to appear rather than be. Giacomo is an advertiser, Lorenzo is a notary, Sandro is a dentist, and Willy is a car salesman.

When Debora's ex-husband, a popular neomelodic singer, loses his life in a stage dive, she worries that her 11-year-old son Ciro may be showing symptoms of depression. Taken to a child psychologist, shy Tommaso, Ciro eventually confesses to him that it's not his father's death that has got him down, it's love for his classmate, the cute Ludovica. The two make a deal: Tommaso will help Ciro to win the affections of Ludovica, while Ciro will give Tommaso a hand at having a chance with his mother.

After twenty years, five high school classmates meet again at Daniele's wedding, the only one who has built a career for himself. During a long weekend in Switzerland, the five friends rediscover the affection and complicity of the past, and they get a chance to straighten out their destinies. A whirlwind of misunderstandings will bring down their shaky balances, and they'll all find the courage to put themselves on the line and start their lives afresh

Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.

When an uncompromising idealist and rich, arrogant heir cross paths, their contrasting beliefs begin to shift when they fall for each other.

To avoid jail, a tax-dodging businessman is sentenced to a year of community service in a homeless shelter.

Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.

A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.

A tale of a philosophical womanizer who is forced to question his seemingly carefree existence.

Gilberto, 50enne, si fa coinvolgere in una cosiddetta speed-date, una gara in cui i protagonisti devono trovare un partner in 3 minuti. Arrestato, deve confessare tutto in presenza della moglie che lo sbatte fuori di casa. Rifugiatosi da amici scopre che il suo migliore amico è amante della moglie e comincia a tentare di avviare nuove relazioni che falliscono tutte.

A portrait of the flaws and peculiarities of four type of girls living in different districts of Rome.

After receiving a large sum of money on his bank account by mistake, a small-town thirtysomething dissatisfied with his life sees the opportunity of turning back the clock to when things were good, reliving the carefree life of an university student in a big city. Here, he falls in love with a girl and gets her pregnant. There's just one problem: he already has a wife and a daughter back home!

Giulio suddenly finds himself having to change his life when his wife, after discovering his betrayal, asks for a separation and, suddenly, the reality around him is no longer the same. Forty years old and father of two children, Giulio is forced by circumstances to say goodbye to family and economic well-being and to study new solutions in order to stay afloat and not drown in a new poverty made of double rents and double bills to pay, solitary lunches in fourth-rate restaurants, children's wishes not to be ignored and creditors to hide from.

A romantic comedy told with a set of interwoven Christmas tales about life, love, forgiveness and caring. A heroic vagrant becomes a TV sensation Santa Claws, while a prince takes a menial job at a department store to woo his sweetheart.

Gaetano is a divorced traffic cop in a relationship with a beautiful and exuberant woman, for whom he happily provides standards of living well above his means. He plans to propose to her, but she is thinking to run away with his handsome superior. In the midst of debts, unpaid alimony and other serious financial issues, Gaetano unexpectedly wins the lottery, turning the fortune around.

Six people struggling with their relationship, or lack thereof, cross paths with their respective exes — and discover they might still harbor feelings for each other.

A queue at the ATM machine, a displaced family after a seismic shock that has half-washed their home, a tour within an art gallery, moments of everyday life that become the cues for the emergence of comic, farce, paradoxical situations – trademarks of one of the most successful Italian comic groups.

A school janitor pretends to be a priest in order to give private lessons to a young top model.

Several groups of Italians experience amusing adventures and tests of character on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Some of the characters are there simply for rest and relaxation, while others act with different motivations. Multiple plot lines unfold simultaneously as different characters' stories are presented.

Sara and Nicola are married and in love. Their lives seem to be perfect: they have an angelic six-year-old daughter, thriving careers and a stable marriage. The birth of their second child, which disrupts the family balance, leads to tragicomic scenarios.

Silvio refuses to fight for the fascists and joins the resistance with Elena. After the war, his vitriolic newspaper articles cause him to be sentenced to imprisonment.

In a large villa on Lake Como, everything is ready to celebrate Elio and Caterina's wedding. It will be the most beautiful day of their lives and also of their parents' lives, especially their respective fathers, Giacomo and Giovanni. Too bad that together with Margherita, Giovanni's ex-wife and mother of the bride, Aldo, her new partner, also arrives at the wedding. Friendly, outgoing and above all a total troublemaker. Giacomo and Giovanni try to contain him in every way, but under Aldo's blows, cracks open up from which a hidden malaise emerges, destined to call into question the friendship between Giovanni and Giacomo, their marriages and more. And that will force everyone to deal with their own doubts and with the courage it takes to allow themselves happiness.

Claudia is married with Giovanni, a rather dull type. Meek Giacomo is happily divorced, until he meets her. Aldo is a colorful cabbie with whom she had an affair. Who'll win her heart?

Paralyzed from a crash, Nicola falls for his physiotherapist Lucia. Franco and Manuela seek fertility treatment in Barcelona. Filippo and Fosco, a gay couple, plan their wedding. Ernesto, a waiter, has an affair with Spanish cook Cecilia.

Giovanna, Carla, Francesca, Chiara. What these women have in common so different from each other? Which will never be the not insignificant detail that makes their lives secretly imperfect? And what mystery female is so intimate and private, that more private you can not? Whatever it is, all they want. A food designer, her first love and one sciampista for dogs are the stars of this comedy merrily shameless telling women what no one had ever dared to tell.

Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.

Set against the sun-soaked shores of Italy in the summertime, seven different tales unfold about life, love, loss, family, and friendship.

A psychoanalyst learns to have an illness and as a consequence he decides to quit his job. All his patients get together to find a way to make him feel better.

Summer Sunday at a small beach house at the coast of Rome. Many people and stories: women's basketball team, two sports-obsessed soldiers, two men with their girlfriends and the priest with a big secret, an elderly couple with their pregnant granddaughter, and engagemented couple wanting to have sex for the first time.

In many small episodes, various characters represent the typical vices and comedy of Italian society in early 2000.

Vanni and Linda live in a penthouse apartment for rent in the center of Rome. Vanni writes novels, Linda 'cooperates' to his novels. Between a vernissage and an exhibition of Basquiat, thay hang out Alfredo and Constanza, a couple on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Alfredo is a surgeon with the habit of waking up early and has a lover, Constanza is a dermatologist with the same habits. With the intent to vent their frustrations in their friends' living room, Alfredo and Constanza take hostage the couple and recriminate loudly about the past and the present. In an impossible attempt to contain them, Vanni and Linda eventually take the field and also thrash each other. Someone will end up getting hurt by the end of the night.

Roman TV technicians Fabio and Enzo have been unable to find decent jobs. They decide to crack a safe at a jewelry in Milan. To get the layout of the store, they enlist a beautiful but unsophisticated young woman, Deborah. To find underground access to the store, they get help from a sewage worker. An obese trapeze artist is called for disarm the store alarms. The clever Mrs. Motta, old hotelier, is also involved. Will they succeed?

Enrico is a corporate man whose job is to manipulate inexperienced scions into selling their flailing companies. His latest assignment proves more difficult than anticipated—since his target are two young siblings whose parents just died in a car accident.

Luca Cupiello, like every Christmas, prepares the crib, amid the disinterest of his wife Concetta and his son Tommasino. Ninuccia, the other daughter, writes a letter to her husband in which she communicates that she leaves him for her lover. The letter happens in the hands of Luca who hands it over to his son-in-law, who thus learns of his wife's betrayal. During lunch on Christmas Eve, the two rivals, who were confronted by Luca's carelessness, clash violently.

Ernesto and Filippo, two high school teachers, couldn’t be more different: Filippo is a cheerful liberal who is constantly online. Handsome and youthful, he is a serial seducer on the social networks. Ernesto, instead is a stern conservative, rigorously computerless. He is probably the last person around who still has a first-generation cell phone and his teaching methods are very traditional. They used to be best friends but an unresolved fight kept them far apart, until the day fate intervened and they found themselves teaching at the same school. Their opposite viewpoints will soon and inevitably lead to a new clash. The internet will force them to deal with their past, which resurfaces in the shape of Nina, a young woman who conducts an experiment on them: Filippo must try to leave the world of Internet and Ernesto must try to enter it.

A wealthy millionaire decided to commit suicide but meets a homeless with whom he experiences a lot of funny adventures until finally makes order in his life.

Funny, entertaining comedy with a few storylines. All of them have one thing in common - a resort town of Rimini in Italy.

An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her behind. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.

The lawyer Pio has the personality of an earthworm. The priest assigns him, as a driver, the rather prejudiced Amedeo, rough manners and unlikely clothes. The second will wake up the first.

Carlo descends on his former lover's unsuspecting family and the scheming Rocco tries to break up his old rival Marcello's wedding.

Pio and Amedeo are inseparable friends, or at least they were until they graduated from high school, at which point each one was faced with the question: move up north or stay in the south?

Back from the hospital where he has been treated after a heart attack, Lorenzo is on his way upstairs to his top-floor apartment in Naples when he meets Michela. The charming young woman, who has just moved to the facing apartment, has forgotten her keys and finds herself locked out. Cynical and grumpy, the retired lawyer who has been living estranged from the rest of the world, should normally leave her to her fate but he mellows under her spontaneous charm. He helps her, becomes friends not only with her but with her husband Fabio and their two children. For once, the self-declared misanthropist seems to be experiencing the long forgotten feeling of empathy.

Michele, Goffredo, Mirko and Vito are four friends who have participated in the battles of the student in Sixties. Now in the Seventies, the four friends don't know what to do, though young and with so many possibilities to find a job in life. Intellectuals marginalized and misunderstood, the four friends find themselves when they can in a restaurant to discuss their outlandish theories. A girl named Olga disrupts their life, but Michele is her favorite, although he does not know what to do with the girl.

Lea and her husband Marc have known Francis and his wife Karine for a very long time. Over the years, each one of them has been assigned a specific role. The balance and dynamic of the group is blown up when Lea decides to write a novel, which turns into an immediate bestseller…

It depicts the lives of several groups of characters interacting at the beach of Forte dei Marmi during the mid-1980s.

In Italy, three men fall in love with three women. First a young engaged lawyer has a fling, then the middle-aged married man has a fling, then a retired man falls in love with his friend's daughter.

Lucia is a young and talented advertiser but is out of luck when it comes to love. Madly in love with her best friend's boyfriend, she struggles with her feelings when they are set to get married.

The film follows the story of two couples in crisis who are about to break up but who, due to the Lockdown, imposed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, will instead be forced into a forced coexistence. The protagonists, through smartkworking, household chores and sports activities, will find themselves living under the same roof, giving life to a comedy full of laughter but also of reflections.

A group of former high school classmates meets for a reunion 15 years after graduation, only to discover that any innocence or friendship is long lost.

During the bombing of Naples in World War II, a cynical businessman helps a naive prostitute, who spends the next two decades desperate to have him reciprocate her feelings.

Antonio married Amalia and went to fight in Russia during World War II. Since he didn't return Amalia thought he was dead, so she married another man. Many year after the war end, Antonio returned. Amalia has to choose between two husbands.

La vie n’est pas rose tous les jours pour Solweig, caissière dans un supermarché. Mais elle garde le sourire, malgré les remarques souvent déplaisantes des clients et un chef teigneux. Peut-être grâce au blog qu’elle tient en secret, où elle s’épanche avec humour sur son quotidien difficile… Un soir, sous la neige, son destin croise celui de Charles. Le jeune homme tombe aussitôt amoureux d’elle, sans se douter qu’ils ne sont pas du même monde. Mais si un simple blog peut changer le sort de milliers de caissières, n’est-il pas permis de croire aux contes de fées ?

The life of a working-class boy in Rome through the '70s and '80s, choosing his own path with his friends and family.

Andrea is a handsome and cocky 38-year old man with a successful business career. Shallow, womanizing and a confirmed bachelor, his life seems to be just perfect... until the day he comes home and finds there Layla, a teenage girl who claims to be his daughter. Alongside Layla is her grandfather Enzo, a former rockstar and the father of Andrea's first fleeting and forgotten conquest. And they've come to stay!

Anna is an accountant for an important insurance firm and lives with her longterm lover Alessio - a man who longs for a stable longterm relationship with children, home, etc. Anna, feeling as though the fire has fizzled in that relationship takes up with co-worker Domenico and the two begin a passionate affair.

Gianni is a taxi driver dissatisfied with his life. One day by chance he gets the opportunity to take possession of the villa and life of a billionaire on holiday.

In a parallel universe, live people’s precious consciences. They all feel disheartened, demotivated, and unheard, except for Otto (Francesco Scianna). He is the top-ranked conscience, because his human Filippo (Filippo Scicchitano) follows him blindly, guaranteeing him happiness.

The inmate Proietti, nicknamed "Er Soffia", getting out of prison. There is the Roman brigadier Vasco Sacchetti, an agent of the narcotics and his old friend who, to celebrate his freedom, invites him to eat fish at Fiumicino.

On an unusual day, a series of coincidences lead Eduardo to meet Monica at a party. A curiosity is aroused between the two and, despite not being alike, they fall madly in love. In 1980s Brasília, their love needs to mature and learn to overcome differences.

Eli has four children, an unemployed husband and a job with an almost impossible commute. Vale is single and makes ends meet by working in clubs as a dancer. Tied by a profound emotional bond of true sisterhood, the two women's lives are two sides of the same coin, but their mutual solidarity isn’t always enough to lighten the load of their difficult circumstances.

Set during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s, Luka is a mild-mannered railway clerk whose life is turned upside down, not just by the outbreak of the war, but when his wife runs off with a local musician. Then Luka's son is conscripted and eventually captured in the fighting. To recover his son, Luka is commanded to guard a pretty young Muslim nurse who will be used in a hostage swapping operation.

Carpenter Arturo becomes a literary sensation when the children's stories he writes in his spare time get published, but he comes to resent success and the spotlight that comes with it. During a press tour he falls in love with beautiful married woman, Matilde.

A young bank teller, literally allergic to paper money, becomes the worst nightmare of his best customer, a wealthy butcher who manages his business unscrupulously.

A man dedicated to religion and very faithful husband suddenly finds himself single. The new shop assistant in his shop will overwhelm his life.

35-year-old Alice has a husband and a son. Her life seems a beautiful dream, but it soon turns out to be a nightmare. Her husband dies in a car accident and her lawyer tells her that she is on her uppers. The only way she has to earn money in a short time is by resorting to the oldest job in history.

Con man Aldo breaks out of jail and seizes a car at gunpoint, taking its passengers—bumbling police officer Giacomo and nitpicking civilian Giovanni—hostages. An unlikely friendship blossoms.

When Marino goes to Rome for an event, he certainly does not imagine meeting Marisa, who will become the love of his life. But once love is found, it is a matter of spreading it and here the difficulties begin: first the father who opposes it; then, after the death of his father, the gossips who make Marino believe that Marisa was a little good, so much so that Marisa runs away. Repentant, Marino searches in vain and then, almost by accident, finds her again, Mrs. Ciceri. But love admits no obstacles, not even that of a deaf and dumb husband.

The adventures of the Milanese yuppies continue, always polished, "at home" in via Montenapoleone or at Nepentha, impeccable in dressing and "winning" at work, a little less in private life.

With his family mired in financial troubles, Domenico moves to Milan, Italy, from his small town to get a job in lieu of furthering his education. A lack of options forces him to take a position as a messenger at a big company, where he hopes to receive a promotion soon. There, Domenico meets Antonietta, a young woman in a similar situation as himself. The two form a tentative relationship, but the soulless nature of their jobs threatens to keep them apart.

Four waiters and a cook working at a seaside restaurant hate one another but still keep working together for lack of better opportunities.

Andrea Artusi is a successful businessman with a beautiful wife, Maria, and a happy marriage - until he has an affair. After his own cheating, he starts to become obsessed with his wife's fidelity. Since she is one of the most desired women in town, he worries that it would be very easy for her to cheat on him. Now every time a man looks at his wife, Andrea goes crazy. Meanwhile, Maria finds out about her husband's affair and decides to plan her revenge.

Set in Genoa, the film concerns the financial struggles and emotional strain that occur after Michele loses his job. He and his wife Elsa are forced to give up their affluent lifestyle and cope with the tensions of moving into a smaller home, finding new work, and making sacrifices.



