Branchie

Branchie is a 1999 Italian romantic comedy film directed by Francesco Ranieri Martinotti and starring Gianluca Grignani and Valentina Cervi. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Niccolò Ammaniti. The film was released on 12 November 1999 to mixed to negative reviews.

Plot
Terminally ill with cancer, Marco Donati only has three months to live and decides to work in an abandoned aquarium in Rome. He receives a letter from India from a mysterious person named Mrs. Margareth, who asks him to build the largest aquarium in Delhi. While in India, he has strange encounters with a new group of friends.

Production
Gianluca Grignani made his acting debut with this film. The film was shot for around four weeks in Madras and Genoa.

Reception
The film was reviewed by La Stampa. A critic from Mymovies rated the film one out of five stars. A critic from Film UP wrote that "The character of Marco is an attempt to describe what is commonly believed to be today's young people with a sense of malaise and existential discomfort, which are manifested by the disease. The trip to India is in a certain sense the liberation from all those constraints that this stereotype would feel from the society that surrounds it. In these places you breathe differently, it is a world where spirituality is felt more than the material sense that is experienced in the West".