Those Happy YearsMovies like Those Happy Years
- Key Features:
- Cynical protagonist, Artist, Midlife crisis, Infidelity, Marriage breakdown, Existential crisis, Self-destruction, Dysfunctional relationship, Failure, Loss of identity, Emotional turmoil, Character study
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Drama enthusiasts, Character-driven stories, Art house cinema, Relationship dramas
- Emotional Arc:
- Disillusionment → Despair
Those Happy Years

A narcissistic artist's world turns upside down after his wife's affair and a disastrous exhibition of his work.
Those Happy Years
Tommaso is an American expat film director living in Rome with his young wife and their daughter. Disoriented by his past misgivings and subsequent unexpected blows to his self-esteem, Tommaso wades through this late chapter of his life with an increasingly impaired grasp on reality as he prepares for his next film.

Naples, early 1980s. The strained marriage between Aldo and Vanda is fractured one evening when Aldo admits, unprompted, his infidelity. Equally hurt and bewildered, Vanda attempts to hide her pain from the couple's two school-age kids, lest they discover that their cramped apartment is not a home of trust and love. 30 years later, Aldo and Vanda are still tied together, but their relationship with each other and their children continues to be defined by what happened all those years ago.

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.

Italy from the '80s to the present day, through the dreams, loves, successes and failures of four friends.

Claudio is a construction worker living in the outskirts of Rome. He's happily married and his wife is pregnant with their third child. However, a dramatic event comes to upset this simple and happy life.

Four women in their thirties reevaluate their relationships, both shared and private, after a startling revelation concerning one's marriage forces each of them to ask one of life's biggest questions: "Am I who I want to be?"

Four inseparable friends try to face their midlife crisis with daytrips and pranks at the expense of their families and the people around them.

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.

An old film director, unhappy with the movie he's shooting about a Hungarian circus stranded in Rome during the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising, faces divorce from his producer wife and other problems.

Claudia and Flavio were once passionately in love, but all of that is over. Now, in their fifties, they must venture anew into the world of love and dating once more but for Claudia confronting the end and accepting a new beginning isn’t so easy. Claudia is unwilling to let go and forget the life she’s built with Flavio, while Flavio, eager to move on, soon finds himself in a relationship with a much younger woman. Claudia soon reconnects with Nina, a student from her days as a professor.

Following a breakdown and suicide attempt, an aging actor becomes involved with a much younger woman but soon finds that it's difficult to keep pace with her.

While decluttering her home, a woman's hefty house renovation leads her back to the past when she uncovers her ex-boyfriend's belongings.

In a high school in the outskirts of Rome, it's the last day before the summer holidays. A literature teacher reminisces the past year and wonders what will become of the students he cared for as if they were his children.

In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.

Three friends navigate mid-life crises: a blocked writer, a disillusioned doctor, and a charming man facing bankruptcy and divorce. As their struggles strain friendships, a younger man captures the attention of one friend's wife, complicating their lives further.

Died in a car crash, Paolo is allowed to come back to life for 92 minutes more, thanks to a miscalculation made by Heavenly accountants. He decides to use this newfound time on Earth to fix his mistakes as a father and husband.

Art professor Nino Rolfe attempts to break down his wife Teresa's conventional modesty. Noticing her affection for their daughter's fiancé, Nino instigates her sexual interest in him - setting off a chain of unexpected events and emotional complications...

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 long love story, seen through the memories of one young couple. The journey through the years of two individuals, united, divided, happy, unhappy, deeply in love, or in love with others, in a single stream of emotions and shades of feeling. Over the course of the film, he learns that love can indeed last, while she learns to live with nostalgia.

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.

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.

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.

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 blocked screenwriter, Ezio, is trying to finish a story about two off-kilter families thrown together when their teenage children announce they’re getting married. So Ezio writes himself into the story with a romantic part—a development his characters welcome, as they’ve got some ideas of their own for bigger and better roles.

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.

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.

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.

Alina is a brilliant and enterprising woman who runs a successful art gallery in Palermo. Her husband Daniele, a successful orchestra conductor, cultured and intelligent, is not a regular presence. One day, while accompanying Daniele to the airport, Alina feels a sense of emptiness. She will try to fill it with a butcher who is always joking and full of erotic allusions and who arouses a strong attraction in her.

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 middle-aged man’s relationship with a young model is questioned by his daughter, who’s dating an older man herself.

When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

Stella is a clumsy, cynical, imaginative and tormented teenage girl. After a life-changing car accident involving a dog, she convinces herself she must count her age in dog years: one year of her life counts for seven, and now that she’s turning sixteen, she is a centennial. For this reason, Stella thinks she has not much time left to live and pens a bucket list of all the things she would like to achieve before she dies.

Aspiring thespians Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo work dead-end jobs while nurturing the dream of staging their production of Cyrano de Bergerac, but love for the same lady will tear their friendship apart. Three years later, Giovanni and Giacomo reunite after learning that Aldo is dying.

Anna and Piero fighting routine of a long marriage, when Piero loses his memory, Anna reconstructs his way. For its part, the concierge Rocco and his friend Michele play in a group that emulates the Beatles and face opposition from their partners. Finally, Marcello and Paola are a divorced couple who, from time to time, pretend they are still together to avoid problems. They are victims of a relentless war of sexes.

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.

Everyone in Marco's life seems constantly restless, from his brilliant but unhappily married parents to his own wife Marina, or even Luisa, the real love of his life, a girl he met during a fateful summer in the '70s and always stayed in touch with. Tragedy and fate seem to haunt him, yet he somehow manages never to get ensnared in the chaos—like his namesake, “the hummingbird”, he focuses all his energy at standing still.

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.

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

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.

Antonio is a 30 year old family man, whose life finds an unexpected twist when he's suddenly dumped by his husband, whom he depends both psychologically and economically: he needs to find a new place to stay, a job and a new purpose in life. Antonio finds a room in an apartment owned by Denis and starts to work in a bakery owned by Luca, while attending pastry school. Through this process he discovers that it was wrong of him to give up his independence for the sake of his relationship in the past.

When a love story ends and ones does not know how to say goodbye, here comes the classic excuse: "I'm leaving you because I love you too much." With this exact sentence Daniela says goodbye to Mariano and disappears from his life. His friends try to help him, but Daniela is always in his thoughts. Finally seems to portend the nail that will drive the nail in the guise of a beautiful Brazilian. But winning does not show up at all easy.

Arrogant, self-centered movie director Guido Contini finds himself struggling to find meaning, purpose, and a script for his latest film endeavor. With only a week left before shooting begins, he desperately searches for answers and inspiration from his wife, his mistress, his muse, and his mother.

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

Sharing the same psychologist, kleptomaniac Roberto, who writes stories a bit too realistic and scary for kids, and a narcoleptic Beatrice, who documents everything in her life, begin to think that love could be the cure for their problems. But nothing comes easy to either of them, and, just like in one of Roberto's stories, the happy ending really needs to be sought after. Will they find their own?

A man wakes up one morning with an annoying ringing sound in his ears. A note on the fridge says: "Your friend Luigi has died. P.S. I took the car". The problem is that he does not even remember who this guy Luigi is. This is just the beginning of a tragicomic day during which he will be plunged into the folly of the world. One of those days that changes your life forever.

In a patriarchal society, an ordinary Georgian family lives with three generations under one roof. All are shocked when 52-year-old Manana decides to move out from her parents’ home and live alone. Without her family and her husband, a journey into the unknown begins.

Bruno Salvati is a director of little success, fresh from the separation from his wife Anna with whom he had two children, the twenty-year-old Adele and the seventeen-year-old Tito. Following a sudden illness, Bruno is diagnosed with a disease that requires the intervention of a donor. All his family relationships are called into question, including that with his father Umberto, the custodian of a secret that will force Bruno to embark on a journey in search of someone who can help him.

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

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.

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.

Couple Andrea and Giulia, an outwardly successful couple, are having problems in the bedroom. When Giulia invites Max, an old friend from high school, to stay in the family home with their teenage son, some new attitudes begin to form.

A quirky couple spends their three-year dating anniversary looking back at their relationship and contemplating whether they should break up.

A young husband and father, perfectly content with his life, falls in love with another woman.

Twenty years after tragedy cut their graduation trip short, four friends return to that destination to finish what they started in 1980. However, as they find out, you can't repeat the past.

Giulia and Carlo have been happy together for three years, but Giulia's announcement that she is pregnant sends him into a secret panic. Terrified at his imminent entry into the adult world of irreversible responsibilities, Carlo finds himself tempted by a bewitching 18-year-old girl, Francesca, whom he meets by chance at a wedding. The possibility of one last youthful crazy fling before the impending prison of parenthood proves to be too attractive to resist.

Middle-aged family man Arnaldo is kicked out by his wife because of a misunderstanding. Instead of despairing, Arnaldo takes advantage of the situation to turn around his unsatisfying adult life by going to live in a flat shared with four university students.

Richie Bravo, once upon a time a successful pop star, chases after his faded fame in wintry Rimini. Trapped between permanent intoxication and concerts for busloads of tourists, his world starts to collapse when his adult daughter breaks into his life.

Married for eight years with no children, Brits Katherine and Alex Joyce are driving to Italy, their ultimate destination just outside of Naples to sell the villa they have just inherited from his uncle, the villa where they will be staying during their time there. On the drive, they come to the realization that this trip marks the first time that they have truly been alone together, and as such don't really know one another in the true sense.

Alberto Nardi is a Roman businessman who fancies himself a man of great capabilities, but whose factory teeters perennially on the brink of catastrophe. Alberto is married to a rich and successful businesswoman from Milan, Elvira Almiraghi who has a no-nonsense attitude and barely tolerates the attempts of her husband to keep his factory afloat with her money.

Seventeen-year-old Ginia leaves the countryside in search of a new life in Turin. Restless and seeking adventure, Ginia soon finds it in the beautiful, enigmatic Amelia, whose sensuality and confidence embolden her to begin modeling for the bohemian artists in their circle. A whirlwind affair ensues, and the young seamstress finds herself swept up in an unfamiliar and exciting world of discovery.

A man is broken hearted at the loss of his lover, then later visits the same pain on the next woman with whom he becomes involved.

Lucy is a young gallery assistant who collects mementos from her relationships. She discovers that she must let go of her past to move forward, and comes up with a lovely, artistic way to help herself and others who have suffered heartbreak.

Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.

A young father and his two children struggle to find harmony after his wife leaves them for another man.

The story of a loving couple who struggles to keep its relationship alive against the inescapable passing of time, told in a nonlinear way over the course of ten years in their lives.

Giovanni and Raffaella are happily married from ten years, but their relationship goes into crisis when Raffaella falls in love with Valerio Mantovani, a handsome forty-year-old man she knew during the concerts of chamber music she weekly attends with her mother.

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.

A woman in an unhappy relationship takes refuge with a friend's family on holiday in Tuscany.

Isabelle, Parisian artist, divorced mother, is looking for love, true love, at last.

Middle-aged Giulietta grows suspicious of her husband, Giorgio, when his behavior grows increasingly questionable. One night when Giorgio initiates a seance amongst his friends, Giulietta gets in touch with spirits and learns more about herself and her painful past. Slightly skeptical, but intrigued, she visits a mystic who gives her more information -- and nudges her toward the realization that her husband is indeed a philanderer.

After 15 years as a couple, Ale and Alex decide to throw a party to celebrate their separation, leaving their loved ones perplexed.

Michele Apicella lives in Rome, in an apartment paid for by his father. Abandoned by his wife and his son Andrea, he occupies his time acting in an experimental theater company under the artistic direction of his friend Fabio.

Twenty-eight-year-old Margot is happily married to Lou, a good-natured cookbook author. But when Margot meets Daniel, a handsome artist who lives across the street, their mutual attraction is undeniable.

Tommaso meets Stefania. They like each other, they fall in love, they get married. A child is also born. It all started very well, it evolved well, then discreetly, little by little until the crisis. It seemed impossible, yet the love, which seemed really solid, perhaps fell apart, even turning into hatred. Who knows if there is still time to do so. Volo, ex Jena, tries to be a real actor. An appeal test is required.

As young French couple Gilles and Marion officially separate, we see, in reverse order, the milestone moments in their relationship: Gilles revealing his unfaithfulness at a tense dinner party; Marion giving birth to their premature son while Gilles is elsewhere; Gilles and Marion's joyous wedding; and, finally, the fateful moment when they meet as acquaintances at an Italian beach resort, and their love affair begins.

A middle-aged man finds out his late mother was sponsoring a Brazilian girl who has now become a beautiful model and tries his best not to fall for her.

After the end of WWII, a young Lithuanian woman and a young Italian man from Stromboli impulsively marry, but married life on the island is more demanding than she can accept.

Victor is a legal advisor who finds himself abandoned by his wife and fired the same day. He tries to seek comfort from different friends and family members, but everyone he meets is concerned with their own problems. His morale begins to falter when he realizes that no one cares about him.

Leo Bernardi is a successful and acclaimed Italian director. He’s approaching the end of his career but he cannot accept his slow decline. He has just finished shooting his last movie and he’s deeply sad. The movie is inspired by the novel about Casanova written by Arthur Schnitzler, a character so similar to the director, even more than he could imagine. Schnitzler’s Casanova is aged, glory days are over: he lost his charm and his attraction to women, he’s broke and no more eager to travel through Europe. After a long exile, he just wants to go back to Venice, his homeland. While traveling home Casanova meets a girl, Marcolina. She reawakens his desire, lost for years. So, he tries to seduce her but that leads him to a tragic understanding: he’s an old man now. It’s not by chance that Leo Bernardi decided to tell this story right now, in a pivotal moment of his life and career. The destiny of both Casanova and his director leads them to a final confrontation.

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.

An anthology of four comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy: frothy young love and office politics in the big city; milk advertisements that begin to haunt an aging prude; a trophy wife enduring her husband's very public affairs; a lucky ticket-holder at a small town fair.

Ambitious overachiever Hanna just needs one more kid before her life is perfect. Instead, her baby daddy unexpectedly dumps her. Suddenly, she finds herself without a place to live, job or family. With every fiber of her being set for victory, Hanna refuses to give up and decides to win him back. But to get there means having to win something much more important, love and desire for herself and who she is.

Mariano has been married for 10 years with Miranda, a woman way out of his league. Their small-town life is disrupted by womanizing photographer Andrea, who — struck by her good looks — offers Miranda a one-time modelling job. Albeit hesitant, the couple eventually accepts his invitation to the Seychelles...

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

Captures a generational moment - young people on the cusp of truly growing up, tiring of their reflexive cynicism, each in their own ways struggling to connect and define what it means to love and be loved. Six New Yorkers juggle love, friendship, and the keenly challenging specter of adulthood. Sam Wexler is a struggling writer who's having a particularly bad day. When a young boy gets separated from his family on the subway, Sam makes the questionable decision to bring the child back to his apartment and thus begins a rewarding, yet complicated, friendship. Sam's life revolves around his friends — Annie, whose self-image keeps her from commitment; Charlie and Mary Catherine, a couple whose possible move to Los Angeles tests their relationship; and Mississippi, a cabaret singer who catches Sam's eye.

After 20 years of marriage, Maria decides to leave her husband. She moves into room 212 at the hotel across the street, with a bird’s-eye view of her apartment, her husband and the life she shared with him. While she wonders if she made the right decision, many of the people in her life offer their opinions on the matter. They intend to let her know, whether she likes it or not, on what proves to be a life-changing evening.

Gaetano and Delia, a separated couple, try to pick up the pieces of their broken love, recalling all the faults and the mistakes which led them to where they are now.

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.

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

This film focuses on contemporary 30- and 40-somethings trying to make sense of their lives in an age in which the old certainties have disappeared. Lorenzo and Davide make their lives together within a circle that includes Antonio and Angelica, married with children; Nerval and her policeman husband.

Antonio takes a hit on his head when he's out to buy a jar of mushrooms for his wife, and loses his memory. He reappears five years later unaware that time has passed.

During a year, a very content couple approaching retirement are visited by friends and family less happy with their lives.

Tullio Hermil is a chauvinist aristocrat who flaunts his mistress to his wife, but when he believes she has been unfaithful he becomes enamored of her again.

When a wife becomes the breadwinner of her family after her husband loses his job, adultery becomes part of her life.

An artist dumps her longtime boyfriend, but her attempt to take a break from dating ends when she quickly finds herself in two passionate romances.

Two lovers are stuck in stale relationships due to lean finances. But when one is duped into thinking he's suddenly rich, he takes very drastic action.

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.

Matteo Scuro is a retired Sicilian bureaucrat, a widower with five children, all of whom live on the mainland and hold responsible jobs. He decides to surprise each with a visit and finds none as he imagined.

