A great will to live, the review: a sentimental road movie that (does not) seek happiness

The review of A great desire to live: Michela Andreozzi adapts the homonymous novel by Fabio Volo (also the protagonist in the film) into a road movie that explores the crisis of a modern couple. Female protagonist, Vittoria Puccini. Stream on Prime Video.

Go around and then come back, understand and understand each other, confront each other and get out of the comfort zone. Venturing into a new world, losing the reference points. Launching towards change, putting the fear of making mistakes on the side. Michela Andreozzi, after Parents vs Influencer, continues indeed strengthens the partnership with Fabio Volostaging the couple crisis that runs through the tenth novel of the Brescian factotum, or the best-seller A great will to live. From the book, published by Mondadori and released in 2019, and crossed by a constant and inconstant search for happiness as an uplifting state (and the protagonist, like Volo, who often repeats it in his excellent morning radio broadcast, says that “Happiness is overrated”), here is the Prime Video film of the same name, in which we are rebounded, between (a little too much) effective phrases and a certain recognisability, in the upside down world of a couple in crisis, consumed by time and an instinctive desire for rebirth.

Pigeonholing themselves in the vast cauldron of bittersweet comedies, built for relaxed streaming viewing (relaxed up to a certain point, if you have doubts about love, the film could bring you more!), A great will to live it is, by the director’s own admission, a liberating work that should unravel that same will to live dormant by years of sacrifices. And no, not only those that concern the community or current events, but also private, intimate ones. Imagining the protagonists as if they were branches in the shade of the same tree, and then moving them – by weight – in a revealing and bright on the road (but also pre-set, following a path that is easily understood even by those who have not read the book), the film borrows the value of the journey as a restructuring from the novel, making it become almost as much a protagonist as the characters.

Destination paradise in the plot of A great desire to live

The journey in question is that of Marco and Anna, played by Fabio Volo e Victoria Puccini who, after years of love, sealed by the birth of Tommaso (Ludovico Nava), sink into a crisis from which it seems impossible to get out. Anna proposes to Marco that they all move to Ibiza (smart working helps), but in the meantime Marco is asked to move to Amsterdam for work. Nicchia falters, he is tempted, yet he is unable to tell Anna. Meanwhile, we have to honor the promise made to Tommasa: a trip to Norway on the trail of the Vikings. Here, after a jammed start looking for a run-in, in which the actors themselves take measures of the situation, resulting (deliberately?) on two different levels, A great will to live ideally begins as the set moves to the stunning Norwegian beauties. During the trip in the camper, between the Fjords and the midnight sun, Marco and Anna will face themselves and their fears, in relation to a context capable of uncovering reality and the state of things.

A great desire to live: the film with Fabio Volo and Vittoria Puccini, arriving on Prime Video

New prospectives

As written at the beginning of our review, A great will to live he manages to communicate his points of reference in a simple way, in such a way that Anna and Marco (yes, it is a direct reference to Lucio Dalla, of whom Volo is a big fan) become our hypothetical extension. More or less, we find ourselves in their tics, in their ways of doing, in their relational approach, even if filtered by a writing often overflowing in its narrative conception, and therefore little pertinent to a tonal spontaneity that would certainly have helped in the process of empathy, and therefore of necessary credibility (considering that the understanding between Volo and Puccini is strengthened when there is the relative point of no return).

Without paying too much attention to the differences between the film and the novel (one by chance, in the book the journey takes place between Australia and New Zealand), that of Michael Andreozzi it is a real road movie that overturns the concepts of everyday life and rationality, illuminates anxieties and doubts and leads to a dispassionate analysis of a standard couple grappling with a standard dimension made special by the itinerant and wandering cue. After all, the deliberate rigidity of the characters does not help, and the border is well marked, both cinematographic and metaphorical: A great desire to live flows placidly towards the final destination, demonstrating that feelings are pure and true only when they are freed from preconceptions and from external factors. Nothing new, we write and you will think, but maybe it’s enough to observe things from another perspective (which doesn’t hurt). Finally, a special mention: the beautiful tribute to Fabio Concato, which is worth watching.