The Full Monteverdi John La Bouchardière. dir I Fagiolini

British film written and directed by John La Bouchardière and based on his live production of the same name, itself based on Claudio Monteverdi s fourth book of madrigals (1603) which, in turn, is a collection of settings of poems by such Italian renaissance poets as Giovanni Battista Guarini, Ottavio Rinuccini and Torquato Tasso. The film features the British vocal ensemble I Fagiolini and the original cast of actors from the live production. The title is a play on the name of the 1997 film The Full Monty. The plot concerns six couples who are breaking up simultaneously in a restaurant. During the course of their meals, revelations about the past drive the couples to separation. The apparently avantgarde structure of the film is based in the musical material, which is often of highly contrapuntal polyphony, and follows the stories of the different couples in a manner similar to the vocal interchanges in the madrigals.