Let’s Hope It’s a Girl 1986

Elena Leonardi, Liv Ullmann, lives apart from her husband in a weathered rural farmhouse in the country, a place where she shares the home with her younger daughter, a niece, a housemaid who has a daughter the same age, and her husband’s senile old uncle, Uncle Gugo, Bernard Blier. The everyday rhythm of their lives is steadily shaped by the stubborn realities of a farm that struggles to stay afloat, a reminder of how fragile financial stability can be when markets and marriages alike are unsettled.

The return of her husband brings with it a bold plan: to finance a major renovation and build a modern SPA, a gleaming project that promises new opportunities and a brighter future for everyone under the roof. Yet Elena watches the proposal crumble in slow, painful ways. The farm’s dire economics, coupled with a history of failed ventures and mounting debts, makes it impossible to offer more than tepid support for his dream. She weighs the dream against the harsh, grinding needs of the land she tends daily, the employees she relies on, and the fragile balance of a household already stretched thin by competing loyalties and unspoken resentments.

Tragedy strikes when the husband dies in a car accident, a catastrophe that seems fueled by a accumulative frustration—the sense that he is dismissed in business and in the education of his daughters. The moment is amplified by the shock of discovering one of the daughters in bed with yet another fiancé she had just brought home the day before, a scene that fractures trust and amplifies grief. In the wake of the crash, the family confronts not only loss but the untenable idea that their shared life can be easily repaired or redirected.

Grief gives way to a practical, almost clinical plan: sell off the entire property to pay debts and divide what remains. Some members would move to Rome, the senile uncle could be “taken care of” by moving him into a hospice, the older daughter would marry, and the housemaid would follow her husband who had long since emigrated to Australia. It is a stark, almost surgical attempt to salvage something from a situation that feels morally and financially unsustainable.

Yet the plan begins to unravel almost as soon as it is mapped out. The ties that bind this family to the land and to one another prove more resilient than any single business idea or financial rearrangement. Conversations that begin with cold calculations slowly give way to a stubborn sense of duty, and memory, love, and shared history reassert themselves in small, quiet ways. The farm, with all its creaks and stubborn routines, becomes not just a place of duty but a space where each member must reckon with what they owe to one another.

In the end, the family gathers once more at the farmhouse, not to finalize a sale, but to reaffirm their choice to stay together in the country. They may not have a clear solution for how to keep the grounds and the life they’ve built, but they choose solidarity over fragmentation. The decision to remain on the land—despite debt, uncertainty, and the stubborn realities of rural life—speaks to a deeper belief: that some homes endure not simply because they are financially viable, but because they shelter a shared sense of belonging, responsibility, and hope for a future they can face together.