The best Dario Ballantini’s movies

Roberto is a young and ambitious lawyer who is going to marry Sara. His whole life is perfectly planned out. During a expropriation which he is in charge of, he meets Micol, a gorgeous and provocative young woman from a small village in Tuscany. This is when things start to get complicated... Fabio, a famous anchorman, has been the perfect husband for twenty five years. At a party one night, he meets Eliana, a femme fatale full of surprises. This one-night stand proves to be more than what he bargained for when she refuses to leave... Adrian is an American art history professor who moved to Rome after his divorce. He is friends with Augusto, the building's concierge, whose ebullient daughter Viola is about to disrupt his peaceful existence and relight his fire

The film tells the story of the Michelucci family, from the nineteen-seventies to the present day: the central character is the stunningly beautiful Anna, the lively, frivolous and sometimes embarrassing mother of Bruno and Valeria. Everything begins in the Summer of 1971, at the annual Summer beauty pageant held at Livorno’s most popular bathing establishment. Anna is unexpectedly crowned “Most Beautiful Mother”, unwittingly stirring the violent jealousy of her husband. From then on, chaos strikes the family and for Anna, Bruno and his sister Valeria, it is the start of an adventure that will only end thirty years later.

In Florence, the young carpenter Arturo dreams of becoming a great writer. In fact he has the talent to be able to write fantasy stories for children, and so he is snubbed by Italian critics. However Arturo does not give up, and sends the proofs to a famous Florentine editor. Meanwhile, the family of Arturo is broke because his uncle is gone bankrupt with an useless shop. But fame for Arturo arrives early, because the publisher remains excited about the fantastic stories, and so the book is published with the title: The Fish in Love. Arturo starts to know celebrity and wealth, but soon gets bored, because he feels himself suffocated by the fame. Indeed Arturo falls in love with beautiful Matilde, promised in marriage to a pompous man of Bergamo. With her, Arturo flees into a house in the woods, and plans a new life, just like in the fairy tales.

The owner of an Italian natural food company has a heart attack and asks his son, Bernardo, to find the man who saved his life in World War II and bring him to his deathbed. He does so and finds the man in a sanitarium and must deal with his hijinks all the way back to Milan.

Mario, ristoratore fallito che, dopo aver tentato inutilmente il suicidio, (prendendo del sonnifero e utilizzando i gas di scarico dell'auto, che però rimane senza benzina mentre lui stava dormendo) si sveglia e per un'omonimia, viene accolto alla stazione ferroviaria da una famiglia di allevatori di struzzi, che invece sta aspettando l'arrivo di un assessore regionale (anche lui si chiamava Mario) che dovrebbe garantire dei sussidi alla loro traballante attività. Il protagonista, sempre più spaesato, si ritrova circondato dalla premurosa attenzione dei suoi ospiti, fino al chiarimento finale, che genera uno sbigottimento superato da un superbo pranzo di Natale, in cui Mario dimostra la sua bravura di cuoco.