GOD WILLING

GOD WILLING- main

Tommaso is a respected heart surgeon, an atheist with a God complex. A man of science, he is of the opinion that his medical skills trump miracles any day and his performance in the operating theatre supersedes any residual superstition from some dark age.

He prides himself as a rational man and so when his son, Andrea, seemingly decides to come out, he has no qualms that his boy is queer.

Andrea’s coming out is not to declare his homosexuality but his spirituality – he has discovered his vocation and intends to become a priest.

This announcement is a double whammy because Andrea is studying medicine, all set to follow in Dad’s footsteps.

Affronted by his son’s capitulation to Catholicism and consequently abandoning medicine, Tommaso is convinced that Andrea has been brainwashed by a charismatic priest, Don Pietro, and avows to uncover the cleric for the charlatan that he is.

Hiring a private detective and press-ganging (coercing) the services of his son in law and a theatre nurse, Tommaso’s rationality spirals into an entertaining and enlightening irrationality that catapults him out of his comfort zone and brings into sharp focus his calcifying domestic situation.Edoardo Falcone’s elegant script (written in association with Marco Martani) and direction delivers a two pronged irony through Tommaso. As a rational man, he declares a hatred for all forms of discrimination, but when confronted with his own prejudice against religion, he shows he is just as vulnerable and susceptible to bigotry as anyone. And as a heart surgeon, the cardiac consumed egotist has ignored matters of the heart with his wife, Carla, alienating her affection, aiding her ascent into alcoholism, and abetting her abdication from the marriage.

GOD WILLING is a sophisticated comedy that illustrates how illiberal we can be if we are blinded by preconceived ideas, how comfortable conformity can be stultifying and destructive, and how discernment can be corrupted into discrimination.