God Willing – movie review

What a delightful and engaging comedy, which moves along at pace and is entertaining throughout.

Tommaso (Marco Giallini) is a respected heart surgeon, although his relationship with the “heart” is limited to the operating room because his hard-nosed manner is hardly endearing to patients, their families or his students. Nevertheless, he is a highly capable and esteemed professional, gruff and confident. A lifetime ago, he met his gorgeous wife Carla (Laura Morante), then charming and passionate, now a shell, as faded as the ideals in which she believed. She is an unhappy and frustrated upper middle-class woman, whose hobbies are alcohol and long-distance adoptions. The couple has two children.

The oldest, daughter Bianca (Ilaria Spada), lives a vacuous life in the lap of luxury with her real estate agent husband Gianni (Edoardo Pesce), who Tommaso has always treated with disdain. Her brother, Andrea (Enrico Oetiker), is a bright med school student, ready to follow in his father’s footsteps. But lately, Andrea seems to have changed: he often stays in his room, going out in the evening without telling anyone where he goes. His father is convinced he is gay, but hasn’t yet been able to tell the family so dad prepares them all. But when the day of “coming out” does finally arrive, the news isn’t at all what they expected. Tommaso spends the rest of the movie trying to come to terms with the shock and, in so doing, become all the better for it. Slowly but surely he undergoes an epiphany.

In the process, we – the audience – delight in the transformation and the way that co-scriptwriter and first time director Edoardo Falcone has enacted it. Falcone wanted to make a film that talked about the reality around us in a humorous and desecrating way. The initial idea came to him simply by looking around. He knows lots of people who claim to be open-minded, democratic and enlightened but who, in reality, are totally incapable of questioning themselves, showing that they are the exact opposite.

And so is Tommaso, a presumptuous doctor full of himself who will be forced to turn his life and his certainties upside down through his encounter with someone he never expected to befriend, a role filled by Alessandro Gassmann. Much credit must also go Falcone’s fellow scriptwriter, Marco Martani. The pair hadn’t previously worked together.

God Willing has a beautiful heart and that is what makes it so compelling from the get go. I couldn’t get enough of the colourful characters and their back-stories. In fact, I wanted to see even more of those that weren’t quite fleshed out as much as others, in particular daughter Bianca. The acting is an undoubted feature. It is positively endearing. All perform admirably with Marco Giallini setting the tone.

There is a light touch to the film from the start, which doesn’t let up, such that it becomes a rollicking ride without resorting to slapstick. A real crowd pleaser, God Willing sets a high water mark and should be savoured. Rated PG, it scores an 8 out of 10.

Director: Edoardo Maria Falcone
Cast: Marco Giallini, Alessandro Gassman, Laura Morante
Release Date: 2 June 2016
Rating: PG – Mild themes, coarse language and sexual references

Alex First