The best Bob Messini’s drama movies

An acclaimed novelist struggles to write an analysis of love in one of three stories, each set in a different city, that detail the beginning, middle and end of a relationship.

Beatrice is a blabbermouth and a so-called billionaire countess who likes to believe she’s in intimacy with world leaders. Donatella is a young quiet tattooed woman, locked in her own mystery. They are both patients of a mental institution and subject to custodial measures.

The vicissitudes of a newly graduated girl in the universe of the precarious work. Marta is a well- educated girl; she is curious and silent one, which finds work in the call center of a company that sells a futuristic appliance. So she finds out a new fantastic world formed by young telephone operator and fanatic seller, corporate jingle, motivational dance, prize giving, ovation and penance. A bittersweet picture of modern society narrated through the eyes of a funny young philosopher

Garage owner Angelo and big-time film producer Alberto find themselves occupying neighbouring beds in a Rome hospital after suffering heart attacks. Alberto is a gregarious joker - and chain smoker - who has a strong effect on the impressionable Angelo. However, as one of the men's condition deteriorates, the other becomes more deeply involved in his personal life.

Bologna, 1954. Taddeo, a young man of 18 whom everyone calls Kid, dreams of becoming one of the regulars of the mythical Margherita Café, located under the portico across from his family's home. Through a ploy, he manages to get work as the chauffeur for Al, the neighborhood's most glamorous and mysterious resident. Having been taken under Al's wing, Taddeo gets to witness the adventures of Bep, who is in love with Marcella the entraineuse; the trials and tribulations of Gian, an aspiring singer and the victim of a horrible practical joke; the crazy behavior of Manuelo, a small-time robber with a sex phobia; the meanness of Zanchi, inventor of the elastic necktie; and the bizarre manias of Sarti, a ballroom dancing champion who wears his tux day and night. And Taddeo's home life is no less out of the ordinary, considering his mother is being led on by the family physician while his grandfather has fallen head over heels for a well-built piano teacher.

The Pope's tailor sends his son, a virgin at 35, to Bologna hoping he will find a woman. Nello, a classicist moved by the romantic poetry of Ovid, proves to be a good teacher and also falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful Angela Gardini. Angela, herself recently blind and then spurned by her fiancé, uses Nello: she hopes her former lover will become jealous and return to her. Nello obliges, his head full of poetry and in love at last; he's happy to be near her, knowing that she, before her disability, wouldn't have looked twice at him. Bologna or Rome, teaching or stitching, love or solitude - will Nello make choices?