Wondrous Boccaccio

Wondrous Boccaccio is a 2015 Italian film directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. It is loosely based on stories from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. Plot During the mid-14th century, in Florence, some young people of rich families are fleeing the city haunted by the plague. They take refuge in a large country house, and spend their time there telling stories. The first story is set in Modena. Messer Gentile Garisendi is in love with Catalina, wife of Nicoluccio. She falls ill and her husband's mother fears that she has plague and will infect others in the household. She insists that she be taken away to the countryside to be cared for away from others. Her husband reluctantly agrees to this plan. On the trip, she dies. The carriage driver dumps her body off in a crypt at an abandoned church. Meanwhile, Gentile who had followed her carriage, sees her body in the crypt. He kisses her, and feels her heart beating. He takes her to his mother's villa where she is nursed back to health. He tells her that he wants to marry her. He invites a group of friends, including Nicoluccio, to see his chosen bride. He poses the question to the gathered group: a loyal servant falls ill and his patron abandons him. If another man picks up the servant, nurses him to health, shouldn't the second man be able to keep the servant? Nicoluccio answers, saying that the original patron has lost his right to have the servant and that he rightfully belongs to the second man. At that moment, Gentile reveals Catalina to the group, saying that she must decide between him and Nicoluccio. Nicoluccio, horrified, says she has come from hell. She looks at him, and says that no, I have come from paradise. She rejects him, remembering how he did not stay with her and turned her out in her illness. In the second story: in Florence the oaf Calandrino apprentices in an art studio of a famous painter. Two of his fellow apprentices trick him by telling him of a stone that has the power to make people invisible. They go with him to the riverside to find such a stone. He finds one and they pretend that he is invisible. They convince their neighbors to play along with the ruse. Calendrino returns, carrying this stone, thinking that he is invisible, stealing gold from his neighbors' pouches, leering at a young woman, kicking the cane out from under the master painter. He arrives home and his wife, who doesn't know of the trick, looks at him and tells him his dinner is ready.