Good Morning Heartache

Colour, 35 mm
Italy, 2008, 93 min
Section: Forum of Independents

Synopsis

There is no good day to announce a split – especially not one that was planned as an anniversary celebration. But Lucia doesn’t want to give up on her husband Giovanni. In her spontaneous struggle for her husband’s heart, she involves not only friends but also a filmmaker named Eros, who films the diverging couple’s every moment with his partner. What was originally intended to be a documentary about freelance filmmakers becomes a testament to the everyday problems in the relationships of big-city couples. And in the same way that no decision in a relationship can ever be considered final, dividing the protagonists into villains and heroes would be short-sighted. This film, which examines all the different kinds of love and its unpredictability in particular – with Billie Holiday’s sad “Good Morning Heartache” strewn throughout – represents the young blood of Italian cinema. Despite the attractive moviemaking milieu, the film is not cast in the resplendent light we know from gossip columns.

About the director

Anna Negri (b. 1964, Venice) moved from her native Italy to Paris at the age of eighteen and worked as an assistant for various directors including Nagisa Oshima. She studied in Groningen, Holland, and in London, where she made her first short and began working for the television station Channel 4. Her feature film debut, In the Beginning There Was Underwear (In principio erano le mutande, 1999) premiered at the international film festival in Berlin. In Italy she continued with her television work and her film Forbidden Love (L’amore proibito, 2007) was included in the competition at the Roma Fiction Fest. Negri also served as co-writer for Good Morning Heartache, which premiered in competition at Sundance.