Malady Actually, the “contagion” is loneliness, the cure for which the directors found in each other (in their own words). In general, Matteo and Daniele’s second film together was a rather weak attempt to tell the love story of a Roman professor.
The film is based on a book that was released in 2008 and became quite popular, then a play was staged on it, and in 2017 a film. Actually, the script was written and modernized with the authors of the theatrical production. It is for this reason that the film begins with a general view of the building where the heroes live - each arch leads to the apartments, aka the "story" of the heroes, of which there are quite a lot and they are all closely related. The result is a kind of cast of modern social life in Rome, where migrants and garbage bring more money to the mafia than drugs.
The book is devoid of dialogue at all, it is just a narrative on behalf of the main character, Professor Walter. However, in the film, his presence is more episodic, the insertions of his “fantasies” are ridiculous against the background of the general canvas, look vulgar and unnaturally grotesque. It is obvious that most of the events are not connected with him at all, and the actual history of his relations remains behind the scenes.
The infantilism of heroes is elevated to the Absolute. There is hardly anyone among them who will evoke sympathy. Everything - emotions, plots, characters - seem "not twisted." However, Matteo and Daniele claim that they wanted to create a sense of fragmentary conversations, the ones we hear when walking among strangers.