AllMovie

This freewheeling look at Naples and its foibles through the tenants who live in an apartment building offers a fictionalized but lively account of what it means to be Neapolitan. Gennaro Bellavista (director and co-scripter Luciano De Crescenzo) holds classroom court every day in the building, where his neighbors and the concierges gather to listen to his instructive and opinionated views of the city. For Bellavista, the northern Italians are inspired by concepts like "freedom," while the more hot-blooded southerners are swayed the most by love. A case in point is the stuffy Milanese businessman Cazzaniga (Renato Scarpa) who starts to rearrange the mailboxes the moment he moves into his apartment -- now it remains to be seen if he will give in to the southern love of fun. Shadows are cast on the insular lives of these tenants as references to the "Camorra" -- a local Neapolitan Mafia -- and the threat of rising unemployment indicate that not everything is fun, even for the southerners.