Allacciate le cinture (2014)

Lecce, 2000. Elena, a waitress at a bar, works with Silvia and her gay roommate, Fabio. The three are friends, but tensions arise between them because of Antonio, a homophobic and racist mechanic. Antonio goes to the bar where the three work to see Silvia, but he often ends up seeing Elena too. One day, he tells her that he is dyslexic. As Elena seems to soften her contempt for Antonio, she and Fabio start a project to take over a gas station and turn it into a bar. Meanwhile, Elena and Antonio’s relationship turns into a physical attraction, even though Elena has been dating Giorgio for two years. One day, Elena gives in to her instincts and follows Antonio to his workshop, where the two come close to having sex. After that, they start seeing each other. Thirteen years later. Elena and Fabio are celebrating the anniversary of the opening of their business, which is full of people and friends. Elena already has two children: a ten-year-old girl and a younger boy. But her husband is not Giorgio: it is Antonio. Elena is still friends and business partners with Fabio, and often spends time with his mother, Anna, and his eccentric aunt Viviana. Her relationship with Antonio, however, is troubled: their differences in temperament lead to frequent arguments, which the children helplessly witness. Elena’s busy life, full of plans, suddenly comes to a halt when a routine check-up leads to a diagnosis of breast cancer, which she will have to treat with a course of chemotherapy. While her family and friends rally around her, Antonio seems to retreat behind an insurmountable wall of grief. In the midst of all this, Elena also forms an unexpected friendship with Maricla, a hairdresser and her husband’s former lover. Her treatment and illness soon force Elena to give up work and be admitted to hospital several times. There, she gets to know a doctor who, thirteen years earlier, had been a customer at the bar where she worked, and a cheerful roommate, Egle. In these circumstances, Elena and Antonio rediscover the passion that had brought them together thirteen years earlier, and make love in the hospital despite the woman’s terrible physical condition, with her illness now at an advanced stage. One morning, Egle dies, and Elena is overcome with deep distress, even though the doctor reassures her about her chances of recovery. Elena decides to run away and go home anyway. There, she has a vision of the future, somewhere between a dream and a premonition: her whole family, dressed in white, gathers around Antonio’s new partner, the hairdresser Maricla, as she gives birth to a baby girl who is named Elena. The arrival of her husband in person interrupts the vision. Instead of taking her back to the hospital, he decides to bring her to the little cove where they made love for the first time thirteen years earlier. As they are leaving, their car nearly collides with a couple on a motorcycle: it is them, thirteen years earlier, arriving at that very beach. The year is 2000. Elena and Antonio are forced to reveal their relationship. Pressed for an answer, Elena arranges to meet her friend Silvia to tell her the whole truth. When the two meet, before Elena can make her revelation, Silvia makes a counter-revelation, confessing that she is having an affair with Elena’s boyfriend, Giorgio, and that Antonio is merely a kind of diversion and cover. Silvia bursts into tears, but Elena and Fabio start laughing, leaving their friend surprised but happy.