Wondrous Boccaccio

Wondrous Boccaccio (Maraviglioso Boccaccio, 2015) is an Italian-French period drama you can watch online on iFILM. Florence, 1348. The Black Death is emptying the streets, so ten young Florentines — seven women, three men — abandon the city for a deserted villa up in the Tuscan hills.

To hold off the terror, they make a pact: each one tells a story. Some are funny, some cruel, a few openly erotic, and a woman sits at the heart of nearly all of them. The film slips straight into those tales — a convent hiding its sins under a habit, a knight who wagers his own heart, a widow who outsmarts every man chasing her. Riccardo Scamarcio, Vittoria Puccini, Kim Rossi Stuart, Kasia Smutniak and Jasmine Trinca lead the ensemble.

Directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani pulled just five novellas from Boccaccio's Decameron and shot them slow, outdoors, in long unhurried takes. This is cinema about faces, light and the quiet between lines more than about plot. It rewards viewers who love patient European filmmaking and aren't put off by a fourteenth-century source. Stream Wondrous Boccaccio (2015) online on iFILM.