Valentino's Gift

When Valentino, a retired mechanic from a little Italian village offers thirty antique roses to his wife Eleonora to celebrate their thirty-year anniversary, he had not foreseen the effects of his gift. Today, his garden – that borders the highway, the railway and a football field – hosts more than two thousand rose bushes, each one different from the other. Eleonora, a lively housewife, knows the story behind every plant: “The rose is not just the symbol of love!” – she tells visitors who flock to see her garden like bees to a hive – “but of several kinds of love!” Eleven months of pruning among stingy thorns – Valentino on the high ladder, Eleonora on the lower bushes – for just one month of bliss: antique roses only bloom in May. In the biggest rose garden of Europe love is mostly an act of daily care.

The documentary can be watched on demand on the platform Adessocinema.