52 Films by Women Vol 10. 9. THREE GOODBYES (Tre Ciotole) (Director: Isabel Coixet)
Coixet is one of the
most prolific women directors working in cinema and television today. Her films
mostly concern relatively unremarkable individuals who negotiate difficult
situations, which arguably could describe the majority of films made by women. Much
of her work is adapted from novels. She avails herself of the opportunity to
work with actors more than once, collaborating with Ben Kingsley in Elegy (2008) and Learning To
Drive (2014), Patricia Clarkson
in Learning To Drive and The Bookshop (2017)
and Rinko Kikuchi in Map of
the Sounds of Tokyo (2009) and Endless Night (2015). Tre Ciotole is her
third film with Sarita Choudhury, who also appeared in Learning To Drive and It Snows in Benidorm (2020).
Coixet describes herself as preferring the role of the outsider and putting on
screen aspects of a location that pique her interest. Filming Tre Ciotole in Rome, she was keen not to showcase famous
monuments. There is one scene in Tre
Ciotele that typifies her
style. Marta watches a young child cry after their two-flavoured ice cream cone
falls to the ground. Marta visits an ice cream parlour and asks for the child’s
exact combination, dark chocolate on the base, another flavour balanced
precariously on top of it. You expect Marta to present the ice cream to the
child. Instead, she eats it herself. She too spills ice cream on the ground, less
than the child, but enough to deprive herself of one flavour. She does not cry
though, rather she scoops up the fallen ball to eat it. The inference is clear.
Marta wants to understand why a particular combination of ice cream flavours is
so desirable and to enjoy it herself. You might term this selfish, but it is an
expression of her curiosity.
Tre Ciotele is only second screen adaptation of Murgia’s
work, after Paolo Virzi’s 2008 film, Tutta La Vita Davanti (Your Whole Life Ahead
of You), a satire about a
philosophy graduate who takes a job in a call centre. Coixet’s film does not
have satiric intent, though it does have a light comic actor in the lead.
Rohrwacher has a child-woman persona, recently taking the comic lead in Roberta
Torre’s film, In The Mirror (Mi fanno male i capelli), as a
character suffering from amnesia and immersing herself in iconic roles played
by Monica Vitti. When Marta splits from Antonio, she starts commenting on his
restaurant online, giving it a series of one-star reviews. We laugh but also
recognise her pain. Similarly, we sympathise with Marta’s decision to rescue a
cardboard cutout of a K-Pop star, Jirko (Sungku Jung) and talk to it in her
apartment. This in turn motivates her to learn Korean. Marta is governed by random
impulses, the implications of which she does not confront.
Coixet and her
co-screenwriter Enrico Audenino cherry-pick details from Murgia’s stories,
changing emphasis and tying strands together to make a coherent whole. In
Murgia’s text, for example, the cardboard cutout is a silhouette. There is a
reference in Murgia’s text to an amoeba that Coixet and Audenino re-word; in
the film, the single cell organism cannot get cancer.
Coixet’s control of her
comic-serious tone is such that we don’t mind when the film’s focus switches to
Antonio. His colleague recognises that the one-star reviews are all written by
the same person; Antonio does not suspect Marta. There is an incident at the
restaurant in which an American customer complains that his dish is uncooked.
‘I didn’t know it would be served raw,’ he protests. Taking it back, Antonio
proclaims, ‘Let’s make him a hamburger.’ The meal is re-served to the customer,
who subsequently gives the restaurant a five-star review. I said the film
wasn’t satirical, but you sense the filmmakers’ impatience with review culture.
At the screening I attended, before the film had even started, a patron opened
up their Letterbox [movie reviewing] webpage, ready to deliver an instant
verdict. Antonio attracts the interest of a younger colleague, Silvia (Galatéa
Bellugi), who joins him in reclaiming the places where he spent time with Marta;
they are inspired to do this after the American customer left his map behind. We
wonder whether their relationship will deepen – Silvia first comes to Antonio’s
aid after he discovers that his motorbike battery is without charge. He looks
longingly out of the window at a neon hotel sign. ‘It is obvious that you still
love her [Marta],’ Antonio is told. A chance encounter with Elisa in a
supermarket draws him to Marta’s door, though the code has changed. Moments
after he departs, we see Marta wheel her bicycle into the building, with none
of Antonio’s anxiety.
Rome’s congestion is
a character in the film, adding to Antonio’s irritation in an early scene as he
complains to Marta about having to leave a gallery early. Holding on to Antonio
as he edges his motorbike through traffic, Marta describes her discomfort.
Antonio compliments the food that was served. How could she not like it? Marta
wants to stop and buy some biscuits. This takes place at the supermarket where
she collects the three bowls of the title, indifferent to Antonio’s annoyance. The
discussion continues in their apartment, culminating in Antonio’s decision to
leave. Marta gets on with her life, meeting with Elisa and hearing how she is
enjoying renting out her apartment, a means by which she can gain an income,
her acting roles having dried up. ‘I am compiling a list of all the cool places
to eat in the neighbourhood,’ she explains enthusiastically. ‘Won’t those
places become touristy as a result?’ Marta asks. It is to Elisa that she
reports her stomach pains; Coixet shows Marta kneeling over a lavatory. We
wonder whether her sickness and loss of appetite could be attributed to her
relationship break-up. This is not the case.
Marta has an admirer
of sorts in Agostino (Francesco Carril), a humanities teacher who tries to
inveigle her into organising a pizza meal for their faculty; another faculty at
their school is doing this. Marta shows no enthusiasm for attending. Agostino
gives her a book by a German author that has a title like ‘We Are What We Eat’
(sadly, I couldn’t trace the book) and is given pause when Marta tells him that
she likes him. She invites him for dinner and makes a request.
In a subplot, Marta
follows two of her pupils who leave her class hastily and disappear into a
lavatory cubicle. She climbs up to spy on them, discovering that at least one
of them is self-harming, covering cuts on her wrist with a bandage. Marta’s
response is not as expected. She does not report what she sees. Rather she asks
Agostino to keep an eye on them, telling him that she is going on a long
journey.
Pictured: Colleagues Agostino (Francesco Carril, left) and Marta (Alba Rohrwacher, right) in a scene from director Isabel Coixet's Italian film, 'Three Goodbyes' (Italian title, 'Tre Ciotole'). Still courtesy of Vision Distribution (Italy)
Murgia died of stage
four kidney cancer. Marta receives a similar diagnosis. She is given
medication. Her condition is monitored. At a certain point, she is told that
the tablets are no longer effective. We wonder whether she will commit suicide.
Whether opening the windows in her apartment or cycling at speed, Marta is
painfully vulnerable; the scenes are unnerving to watch. She attends another
gallery opening and announces her condition.
‘When I’m gone, hold
a party and sell off my possessions,’ Marta tells a tearful Elisa. ‘You can
rent out this apartment or do whatever you want with it.’ Meeting Antonio,
Marta walks by the river and collapses into his arms. Coixet avoids a
sentimental ending by showing a vacant apartment and the actual K Pop star
emerging from Marta’s wardrobe, his cardboard likeness having been stored
there. We see him from Marta’s window, standing in the street below, looking up
and waving goodbye. Coixet has described her film as being concerned with life
rather than about facing death. She stages the drama in Academy Ratio, a
narrower frame than is usual, incorporating flashbacks filmed on Super 8
(‘using a camera I have had forever’). The latter is cliched, but no less
effective. Coixet ends her film with Antonio relating Marta’s favourite joke
about Karl Marx, in which Marx is thrown out of Hell for insisting that all men
are created equal, is invited into Heaven and forms a friendship with Jesus. So
much so, that when Jesus is asked how well Marx gets on with God, Jesus asks,
‘who?’ Coixet insisted that she tried to include that joke in her earlier work,
but there was never a place for it. No place for Marx?
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