The latest from Nanni Moretti is a comic sendup of the creative life and a love letter to cinema itself. Moretti stars as Giovanni, a film director who wishes to adapt John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer” (the basis for Frank Perry’s 1968 Burt Lancaster–starring film of the same name). Sidetracked by working on a historical film about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, his producer wife Paola (Margherita Buy) is hired to work on another project, stirring Giovanni’s resentment that she isn’t idly waiting around to help him make his dream film. Also featuring memorable turns by Silvio Orlando and Mathieu Amalric, A Brighter Tomorrow is a funny, self-reflexive work on the monomania of artists and its effects on the people in their lives.