The wit that runs throughout Bellocchio’s films is given free reign in this self-reflexive comedy. Assigned to film an adaptation of Manzoni’s classic The Betrothed, a besieged director flees to Sicily in search of inspiration. There he happens upon a spirited young woman being forced into an arranged marriage by her father—a situation parallel to the 1827 novel he’s adapting. As life seems to imitate art, our protagonist must ask himself whether he’s playing the hero or the villain. This semi-farcical plot provides Bellocchio fertile ground for musing on the weight of history and tradition in a nation whose past is glorious but whose future is uncertain, a description that fits not only Italy (and the US) but cinema as well.