WATCH: A movie theater hook-up leads to a decades-long love affair in this Italian romance
Oh mio Dio, this gay Italian romance is about to ruin us, isn’t it?Coming (very) soon to Netflix is Nuovo Olimpo, a sweeping, decade-spanning story about love found, lost, and then found again.The film takes its title from a little Italian movie theater, which plays a pivotal role in the lives of two young men, Enea (Un Professore‘s Damiano Gavino) and Pietro (newcomer Andrea Di Luigi).
It’s there, under the glow of the projector, that they first lock eyes, forever changing the course of their lives.We first got word of Nuovo Olimpo a year ago when the streamer announced it had begun production, sharing a photo of writer-director Ferzan Özpetek (Steam: The Turkish Bath, Loose Cannons) with his stars, both looking fabulous in some ’70s-era threads.At the time all we knew of its story was its vague yet evocative synopsis:“Two 25-year-old men who meet by chance, fall madly in love, and are then separated due to an unexpected event.
For the next thirty years they pursue the hope of finding each other again.”But the film’s sumptuous trailer fills in some of the details, first showing us how Enea and Pietro found freedom through the movies shown within the walls of the Nuovo Olimpo, and then how they found each other.Outside the theater, however, revolution is brewing.
Throughout the 1970s, social movements swept through Italy, and a number of student-led protests were met with violence. When one of them comes to the doors of Nuovo Olimpo, it disrupts Enea and Pietro’s cinematic paradise, and the two are torn apart.Cut to 30 years later, the men haven’t seen each other since that fateful day.
