Agata has her own bookshop in the seaport of Genoa, where she works together with Maria Libera (Giselda Volodi, who also had a small role in Pane e tulipani) to convey their encyclopaedic knowledge of world literature to an eager audience. Most eager of all is Nico (Claudio Santamaria) who seems to read a handful of books each week just to be able to ask Agata for advice on what to read next. She likes him as well, though the fact that he is thirteen years younger than her makes her wonder what will become of this. Could she be happy with someone like him? Her brother Gustavo (Emilio Solfrizzi) is a successful architect who is rather unhappily married to a psychologist famous for her television appearances. In the Ligurian countryside, one of her most faithful admirers is Romeo (Giuseppe Battiston, again from Pane...), who will become part of Gustavo and Agata’s family as much by chance as by opportunity.

 

The machinations of the plot are too many and seemingly too random to describe here fully, with touches of magical realism pervading the story for good humour. Wherever Agata passes, light bulbs snap and electrical devices blow up. There is never really an explanation for this, not even from a Chinese guru she visits. He advises her: “Bulb snap. Buy new bulb”. Obviously, something is in the air, and there will be numerous changes in the lives of Agata and her extended family, though the titular storm never really breaks. In Soldini’s brightly coloured fantasy there are no real tempests, just minor agitations that are mostly played for laughs. Agata e la tempesta is first and foremost a funny fantasy, an escape from reality and a gentle (though not particularly realistic) meditation on the sort of love that binds us.

What makes Agata... good cinema rather than say, a soapy sitcom, is its careful attention to its characters and and its attention to locations, cinematography and costumes. They are all carefully studied and underline the gayness and dreamlike quality of Agata and her world. The performances are also uniformly excellent, which is also an important factor given the character-driven nature of the film. Soldini has yet again crafted an escapist fantasy that works. You even forgive him for making it last two hours because his characters are so likeable that towards the end of the film we feel like they have become part of own group of friends if not our family.

 

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