There's an Italian Film Festival playing at the theater across the street from my brother's place. The festival is showing classics like Cinema Paradiso and Il Postino, but it's also got some current movies. Today I saw Sunday Lunch or Il Pranzo della Domenica

Here's the description:
This is the family portrait of an urban tribe of our times. The film begins with an accident that happens to Franco during her ritual Sunday lunch. The old lady slips in the kitchen and breaks here hip. She is taken to a hospital where she will have to spend a few months, looked after her by her daughters. The story recounts what happens to her and her family during this long convalescence. All the tangled knots in the emotional and sentimental relationships and sentimental relationships of her nearest and dearest are brought out into the open. Underlying tensions explode. (actually, wackiness ensues).

Sounds horrible, right? I don' know who wrote the text, but I don't think whoever did saw the movie. If I had to pay for it (the festival is free), there's no way in hell I would have gone after reading that. But the movie turned out to be brilliant, humorous and full of wickedly interesting characters.

The story is about an overbearing matriarch of an Italian family whose accident (broken femur, not hip, incidentally) is the catalyst for a series of vignettes about the troubled lives of her three daughters. The blonde daughter is married to nursery owner with bad ticker but a good heart (quelle le paradox). The redhead is married to a bleeding heart liberal who's unable to control his temper and keeps getting fired from jobs (remind you of someone?). The brunette daughter is married to a philandering lawyer (cliché, yes, but the guy is hilarious).

Try to see it anywhere you can.