The Valdinievole and cinema

The Grotta Giusti spa in Monsummano was used as a location when filming certain scenes in Gianni Zanasi’s film La Felicità è un Sistema Complesso (The Complexity of Happiness), starring Valerio Mastandrea and Giuseppe Battiston. The plot follows Enrico, a consultant who convinces inept entrepreneurs to sell their companies, until he meets 2 orphaned teenagers who will change his outlook on life.

In the same area, director Paolo Virzì shot several scenes from the film La Pazza Gioia (Like Crazy) starring Micaela Ramazzotti and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. The 2 women meet at Villa Biondi (actually a villa on Via Tiberina), a therapeutic community for women with mental health issues, which serves as a place of healing but also of isolation.

During a group outing, the pair decide to run off on a daring adventure from which they will both emerge more mature, more authentic and more human in their weaknesses. During their escape, they will have dinner at a restaurant at Terme Tettuccio in Montecatini—which has been transformed into a luxury hotel for the occasion—then flee along Viale Verdi and through Piazza Italia toward the train station. Other stops along the way include a visit to a clairvoyant in Uzzano and a fun-filled day at the Montecatini hot springs. The trip then continues toward the Tuscan coast. 

Director Dario Boldrini chose Monsummano Terme as the setting for his debut film Amnesia – È Tempo di Dimenticare (Amnesia – Time to Forget), a thriller that follows the story of a tormented young man unable to dream, who desperately tries to escape his hometown. The boy’s plans are turned upside down when one night, at the foot of the magical Tower of Monsummano Alto, an enigmatic figure—the Red Lady—enters the protagonist’s life, handing him a mysterious package destined to change his fate.

For television, several highly successful TV dramas have also been filmed in Montecatini Terme, including Puccini, directed by Giorgio Capitani and starring Alessio Boni, Francesca Cavallini and Stefania Sandrelli, which brought the Tuscan composer’s exploits to life amid the marble architecture and Italian-style parks of the Terme del Tettuccio. Not to mention that RAI had dedicated a historic and hugely popular black-and-white TV series to the great Puccini in the 1970s, starring Alberto Lionello.