BOTTOMS UP

Brunella Filì

SYNOPSIS

Is it possible to be happy and also gravely ill? This what goes roiling through the mind of Nick, an Apulian “Food performer,”  when in February of 2015, he is diagnosed with Cancer. His career is on an upswing, his life is full of friends and long-term projects, but from that moment on, everything changes. After the initial shock and bewilderment, Nick decides to change all the cards on his table. And so he begins to film himself, seeking a sense to what is happening to him and to find his own, personal “recipe for happiness,” right when he's forced to come to terms with a very stern and serious risk of death. The desire to survive will lead him to carry on his projects all the same, projects that will lead him to host a recipe program on a national TV network, precisely when he is in the most acute phase of the sickness, and despite a pathway that denies him everything that he loves: food, sunshine, the sea, not to mention his very outward identity. Nevertheless, this pathway allows him a rebirth of sorts with the rediscovery of the value of the small and supposedly ordinary things of life, just as he finds himself accepting the idea of his imminent death. With a light and ironic touch, through his video diaries shot on the spur of any and all moments, and also thanks to the characters he meets, among whom his male nurse Nicola and his best friend Lella, Nick lays bare sentiments, sorrows, anger and moments of unexpected joy, paradoxically living out the sickness as a marvelous opportunity of rebirth and redemption. He will discover that happiness is an unforeseen recipe, one different for everybody and which can - incredibly - even show itself on a hospital bed. 
 

DIRECTOR'S NOTE

Food, together with water, is the recurring and cathartic element of To Your Health! Without a doubt, healthy food is a key to prevention, but in this film, recovery seen through the presence of food, is only to be construed in its narrative function. In recounting this story, we pay heed not to create confusion: cancer isn't healed with food, but with chemotherapy. Food here is a medicine for the soul, or, to cite Don Pasta in the scene in which he fries his Eggplants Parmesan: “it is an existential place of the affections!”