Critic Reviews

The pile-up of characterizations, melodramatic plot points, time jumps, and the prestigious, overqualified cast gives for some juicy narrative momentum, and Moretti himself approaches this material with absolute conviction––which for some viewers has given the impression of unintentional camp.

It can be overwrought and even absurd but lively and heartfelt.

One feels the lack of an underlying original idea that makes the director’s work so quirky and identifiable, and that also goes for the missing element of ironic-iconic humor that has been slowly disappearing from his films.

Three Floors is not a bad melodrama per se, but has none of the needle-sharp emotional intensity of The Son’s Room (2001).

It’s all mildly involving, in a soapy way, and there are performances and moments to enjoy (and then to miss when they're under-developed), but thematically it’s muddy: you’re left with a hollow feeling that all the pain and recovery on display over this ten-year-period amounts to little in the way of ideas.

Dramatically stilted, cinematically drab and morally dubious at multiple turns, this soapy lather of assorted crises concerning the residents of a single Roman apartment block may come as a crashing disappointment to fans who have been waiting six years for a new Moretti feature.

There’s a lot going on, then, but the three stories don’t really mesh to significant effect, though what does bind them is that the menfolk are stuck in their ways, rightly but mostly wrongly, and the stoic women have to make the best of it.

It’s one of those films that badly tests the patience as each storyline waits to tie itself up neatly and resolve — after two bursts of “Five Years Later” captions — into a honey pot of Italian optimism.

Taking a step back from the many odd beats that make up the film’s rich tapestry, one can vaguely identify a method to its madness: Three Floors attempts to uncover the darkest impulses in man and to paint a stark picture of a confused world in which people seemingly have little control over what they’re doing. But like most melodramas, this one tends towards ideas of reconciliation and forgiveness, and there too, Moretti stumbles more than once.