Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown

During the course of a terrible New Year's Eve, three women are called to the police station: their husbands, who all worked for the same bank, have run off with the tidy sum of 9 billion lire. Having overcome their initial shock, Beatrice, Bianca and Billie decide to take action: aware that the fugitives had been sighted in a bar in Buenos Aires, they jump on a flight and set off to track them down. A cop is on their tracks, watching their every move, in the hope of catching the outlaws: But the female trio, initially not in perfect harmony, soon discover the value of friendship, and how to get over the runaway men they once loved...
After the disastrous box office flop he had with L’ultimo capodanno (1998), Marco Risi has chosen the path of comedy for his return to the camera: the film has a Sixties feel, right down to the opening credits, and the aim is to revive the over-the-top approach of classic 'comedy Italian style' - a more lightweight Pietrangeli perhaps, but the tourist or female films by father Dino too, from Il gaucho (1964) to I nostri mariti (1967) - creating a hybrid with American social satires, like The First Wives Club (1996).
Unfortunately, there is a gulf between the good intentions and the end result: peopled with all manner of stereotypes (the secret homosexual tendencies of one of the fugitives, the schoolgirl solidarity that everything will turn out right...), and packed with silly and improbable dialogue; the film displays quite astonishing banality, and imprisons the blameless actresses in a shirt-of-Nessus of non-existent characters. Basically, it's boring; and one leaves the cinema with a deep sense of foreboding about the future of Italian cinema.

Francesco Troiano

Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown

During the course of a terrible New Year's Eve, three women are called to the police station: their husbands, who all worked for the same bank, have run off with the tidy sum of 9 billion lire. Having overcome their initial shock, Beatrice, Bianca and Billie decide to take action: aware that the fugitives had been sighted in a bar in Buenos Aires, they jump on a flight and set off to track them down. A cop is on their tracks, watching their every move, in the hope of catching the outlaws: But the female trio, initially not in perfect harmony, soon discover the value of friendship, and how to get over the runaway men they once loved...
After the disastrous box office flop he had with L’ultimo capodanno (1998), Marco Risi has chosen the path of comedy for his return to the camera: the film has a Sixties feel, right down to the opening credits, and the aim is to revive the over-the-top approach of classic 'comedy Italian style' - a more lightweight Pietrangeli perhaps, but the tourist or female films by father Dino too, from Il gaucho (1964) to I nostri mariti (1967) - creating a hybrid with American social satires, like The First Wives Club (1996).
Unfortunately, there is a gulf between the good intentions and the end result: peopled with all manner of stereotypes (the secret homosexual tendencies of one of the fugitives, the schoolgirl solidarity that everything will turn out right...), and packed with silly and improbable dialogue; the film displays quite astonishing banality, and imprisons the blameless actresses in a shirt-of-Nessus of non-existent characters. Basically, it's boring; and one leaves the cinema with a deep sense of foreboding about the future of Italian cinema.

Francesco Troiano