Like a Cat on a Highway 2017

Led by Antonio Albanese, Giovanni Minimo heads a European think tank studying whether giving money to people in peripheral neighborhoods could spark entrepreneurship and improve living conditions.

Upon returning from Brussels, he discovers his 13-year-old daughter Agnese, Alice Maselli, now has a boyfriend Alessio from Bastogi, one of the area’s toughest zones. While shadowing Agnese, Giovanni crosses paths with Alessio’s mother Monica, Paola Cortellesi, in a tense moment that ends with her smashing his windshield with a baseball bat. When Giovanni reaches the building where Monica and Alessio live, he tries to dissuade Agnese from her relationship, but Monica is far from convinced that a bond with someone from the elite will do her son any good.

To understand each other better, Giovanni and Monica begin to date and to meet each other’s families, a turn that tests both of them as they navigate two very different worlds. Monica invites Giovanni and Agnese for a day at her favorite beach, the raucous Coccia di morto (dead shell beach), and the following week Giovanni sends an invitation in return to Monica and Alessio for a quiet day at his own beach, Capalbio. The contrast between the two settings highlights how out of place each of them sometimes feels in the other’s milieu.

Monica’s home life adds further color to the unfolding drama: her apartment doubles as a small stage for her twin stepsisters, Pamela and Sue Ellen, who bring their own chaotic energy into the mix—Pamela, Alessandra Giudicessa, and Sue Ellen, Valentina Giudicessa. The tension between the two families is amplified when Luce, Giovanni’s ex-wife who has moved to France to raise lavender for perfumes, returns and Luce Sonia Bergamasco is forced to confront the idea of her daughter’s social circle widening. At the same time, Alessio’s father Sergio, Claudio Amendola, recently pardoned and released, reappears and disparages both Giovanni’s and Luce’s professions, further complicating the delicate balance between aspiration and loyalty.

The lunch that brings everyone together becomes a turning point: Alessio and Agnese break up, and the two families drift back toward their own circles. Yet Sergio’s situation ignites a new plan—Giovanni travels to Brussels to secure the promised EU funding, while Monica chooses a practical use for part of the money and starts a pizzeria with her Bengali neighbor, putting Pamela and Sue Ellen to work delivering pizzas. The plan subtly shifts power and opportunity within their communities, hinting at the real-world reach and limits of such funding.

One evening, Monica herself delivers a pizza downtown to Giovanni. They sit together on a bench in Piazza Cavour, share a slice, and acknowledge that their affair, like so many relationships born from unlikely circumstances, might endure only as long as a cat on a highway. The film closes with a quiet, unresolved note: two people who have found common ground across class lines must decide what comes next, both aware of the fragility and possibility wrapped into their unlikely connection.