Dieci minuti: Italian Cineclub

Start doing what you have never dared to do. This is the advice the psychologist gives Bianca (Barbara Ronchi), the film’s protagonist. Bianca is a career-oriented woman who is wholly absorbed in her work until her world suddenly crumbles. First, she is dumped by her husband, who leaves with another woman after eighteen years of marriage, and then she is fired from the newspaper where she works.

Having fallen into depression, she decides to turn to a psychotherapist who proposes a very particular therapy: doing, for ten minutes a day, new experiences, things she would never have thought of or dared to do, to get out of the comfort zone in which she is holed up. Initially corresponding to Bianca’s, the point of view gradually widens to include the characters who, in one way or another, are part of her life.

The story, told in a tender and gentle way, without ever falling into drama, describes the protagonist’s loneliness, fear of living, and rebirth. The film, scripted by Tognazzi and Francesca Archibugi, another prominent figure in contemporary Italian cinema, is based on the 2013 bestseller “Per Dieci Minuti” by writer and radio anchor Chiara Gamberale.