TORONTO – In 2006, screenwriter Marco Gianfreda wrote a short film Tana Libera Tutti, in which a six-year-old boy yearns to be noticed by a classmate named Flavia. That film earned him a David Di Donatello nomination in the cortometraggio category, and a promising platform from which to launch his screenwriting career. Fast forward almost 20 years later and Gianfreda is now directing his first film, Tre Regole Infallibili, which centers around an adolescent boy courting a girl – yet again – named Flavia. 

The feature film has been making its rounds in the festival circuit, accumulating prizes and special mentions from Taormina to Rome in 2024, and most recently in Norway and the UK. It’s set in Sicily and was shot in Palermo, which lent a dreamy, seaside feel to it. The raw beauty of Sicily’s northwestern coast, the blend of hopefulness and melancholy that sometimes only images of Italy’s south can conjure, is the perfect backdrop to Gianfreda’s coming of age story.

A listless 14-year-old Bruno (Guglielmo Aquaro) contends with his single mother’s latest love life and a classmate crush whom he doesn’t know how to pursue. His mother Claudia, played by one of Italy’s more gifted actresses and star of Cabrini, Cristiana Dell’Anna, is a well-intentioned learn as she goes type of parent. But her latest boyfriend Luca (Matteo Olivetti) becomes a conduit for change in both their lives, and leaves the audience asking more questions long after the film ends.

In fact, it was the film’s finale that attracted Dell’Anna to the project: “I liked the idea not necessarily of the classic happy ending, but of a woman who in a symbolic scene abandons herself to the waves of the sea and finally learns to swim and float alone. A woman who has an identity crises but who understands that she has to rely on herself to be able to truly fall in love”.

The story brings three broken individuals together who for a window in time make magic together, each filling a void for the other. Luca as a surrogate father, showing Bruno the ropes of love and adulthood. Claudia as revelation for Luca, a woman who for him finally demonstrates the value of a committed relationship. And Bruno as a reminder for them all that hope springs eternal – and that love isn’t just a young person’s game, but a rewarding pursuit for anyone who desires it.

Tre Regole Infallibili is the type of film that Italian filmmakers have mastered. A personal and intimate story about the importance of love and family, made universal. The irony of the film’s title is that as hard as the characters try, the rules they impose onto themselves eventually collapse. And what’s left is the realization that the rules must fail for them to learn anything about themselves.

(Images courtesy of Minerva Pictures)    

Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix