Venice 2026: Nanni Moretti’s ‘It Will Happen Tonight’ Enchants Thanks To Stars Jasmine Trinca & Louis Garrel

Watching Louis Garrel and Jasmine Trinca dance with complete abandon to The Rolling Stones classic “She’s a Rainbow,” and then having that intimate sequence turned into a full-on, outdoor, La La Land-like musical number in Nanni Moretti’s joyous and unashamedly romantic dramedy, It Will Happen Tonight (Succederà questa notte) was a sheer cinematic treat.

Garrel and Trinca are among the best actors of their generation in their respective countries, France and Italy, so the joining of these two terrific talents is a glorious event regardless of the material.

But Moretti, and his co-screenwriters Federica Pontremoli and Valia Santella do deliver a delightful, if decidedly old fashioned, take on the lovers-who-were-meant-to-be story.

It Will Happen Tonight, based on the short story collection Hungry Heart by Israeli novelist Eshkol Nevo (a Moretti favorite) is almost a melodrama, feels like vintage Woody Allen and has some wonderfully oddball moments and thanks to the two alluring leads, is never dull. I believe I had a goofy smile on my face throughout most of it.

Matteo (Garrel) wants his pregnant 19-year-old girlfriend Thea (Melina Åkerman) to move from Oslo, where she lives, to Rome so they can raise the child among his family, including his meddling mother, Agnese (Angela Finocchiaro). In the film’s very first scene Agnese tells Thea that she isn’t fit to be a mother. Agnese smacks her across the face. She does not move to Rome. She does, however, allow her newborn son to go live with his father without her. Simultaneously, in another part of the world, the gorgeous Greta (Jasmine Trinca) receives a marriage proposal in front of a large crowd. She’s conflicted and ends up turning it down.

Seven years later, Matteo is playing tennis with his bestie Antonio (Andrea Lattanzi) when suddenly a bride appears on the court and challenges him to a game. They play. She wins. One game. Then vanishes. He’s smitten but does nothing about it. The bride is Greta.

But they do meet again shortly thereafter as Greta, dressed as an old woman for a film shoot, is frantically searching for her wayward seven-year-old girl. Matteo thinks it’s Greta but isn’t certain. Meanwhile he’s off to make his dying, womanizing father (Hippolyte Girardot) happy by going to a Bruce Springsteen concert with him.

Seven MORE years later (I know!) Matteo has married his now late father’s nurse (Elena Lietti) and bumps into Greta again, near the bookshop where he works. This time he confesses the torch he has been carrying for her for the last 14 years. She feigns apprehension but the two begin a passionate affair. And that’s where the Rolling Stones moment comes in. I’ll stop plot exposition here.

Moretti cast Trinca in her very first film, The Son’s Room, back in 2001. And they’ve worked together two times since. I’d watch her read the side effects to Ozempic out loud. That’s how much I adore her. Here she’s simply captivating.

I have admired Garrel since he co-starred in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers in 2003. Then he did two fab Christophe Honoré films back-to-back Ma Mère and Dans Paris. He has become one of international cinema’s finest and most prolific actors.

It Will Happen world premiered, in competition, at the Venice Film Festival.