Moretti also played the central character, a filmmaker who has to deal with Italy's political situation, his own goals as an artist and becoming a father.

The French director Claire Denis described the film thus, "He wants to make a musical comedy but he can't get started.

Following the general election of 1994, won by the centre-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, Moretti is encouraged by a journalist friend to make a documentary about the current political situation in Italy.

He begins shooting another project, alluded to in Dear Diary, a musical about a Trotskyist pastry chef set in the 1950s, but he becomes disillusioned and is distracted by his wife Silvia's pregnancy, which preoccupies him more and more.

On his 44th birthday he realises that he must stop hesitating and he finally begins shooting his musical in earnest.