365 Days
愛は、365の日々で
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A mafia boss kidnaps a woman and gives her a year to fall in love; petitions asked Netflix to remove it. Sequels 2022.
Massimo Torricelli, heir to a Sicilian mafia family, glimpses a young woman on a beach moments before rival dealers shoot him and his father. His father dies. Massimo survives, and while he lies wounded he can think only of her. Five years later he is head of the family, and he has never stopped looking for her. She is Laura Biel, a woman from Warsaw, unhappy with her boyfriend, Martin. When she comes to Sicily with Martin for her birthday, Massimo has her kidnapped.
At his villa he tells her his story and gives her 365 days to fall in love with him. He promises not to touch her without her consent, yet he is physically and sexually aggressive with her: he handcuffs her to a bed, makes her watch him with another woman and threatens to rape her before changing his mind. At a club Laura flirts with a man from a rival family, who gropes her; Massimo shoots the man's hand, sets off a war between the families and blames her. On his yacht, in the middle of an argument, she falls into the sea. He dives in to save her and admits he was afraid of losing her, and Laura realises she has fallen in love with him. They sleep together.
At a masked ball Anna, a woman Massimo left when he found Laura, threatens her. Massimo sends Laura home to Warsaw and promises to follow. She waits for days without a word, goes out with her best friend, Olga, and runs into Martin, who wants her back. Massimo is waiting in her flat, his body marked with wounds from the feud. The next morning he proposes, and she accepts, asking him to keep his work secret from her parents.
Back in Sicily they plan a wedding her family may not attend; only Olga is allowed to come. Laura tells Olga she is pregnant, and Olga urges her to tell Massimo. Before she can, an informant warns that the rival family is about to kill her. Laura's car drives into a tunnel and does not come out the other side. Her call drops, and Massimo breaks down. Her fate is left for the sequel.
Starring
Anna-Maria Siekluckaas Laura Biel
A young woman from Warsaw, unhappy with her boyfriend, who is kidnapped in Sicily and held by a mafia boss.
Laura Biel’s story
Laura's birthday trip to Sicily with her boyfriend, Martin, ends with her abduction. Massimo Torricelli, the mafia boss who has searched for her for five years, gives her 365 days to fall in love with him. He promises not to touch her without her consent, then handcuffs her to a bed, makes her watch him with another woman and threatens to rape her. She provokes him, flirts with a rival at a club and is blamed for the war that follows. When she falls from his yacht and he saves her, she realises she loves him. Sent home to Warsaw, she waits days for word, finds him waiting in her flat and accepts his proposal. Pregnant, and before she can tell him, her car enters a tunnel and does not come out.
Michele Morroneas Massimo Torricelli
The head of a Sicilian crime family, fixated for years on a woman he glimpsed once, who abducts her to make her love him.
Massimo Torricelli’s story
Massimo Torricelli glimpses Laura on a beach moments before rival dealers shoot him and his father. His father dies; lying wounded, Massimo thinks only of her. Five years later, head of the family, he has her abducted and gives her 365 days to love him. He promises not to touch her without her consent, then handcuffs her, makes her watch him with another woman and threatens to rape her before changing his mind. When a rival gropes her, he shoots the man's hand, starts a war and blames her. He dives in when she falls from his yacht and admits he is afraid of losing her. He follows her to Warsaw, marked by the feud, and proposes. When her car vanishes into a tunnel and her call drops, he breaks down.
Magdalena Lamparskaas Olga
Laura's best friend in Warsaw, the only person from her life allowed to come to the wedding.
Otar Saralidzeas Domenico
One of Massimo's men, who looks after Laura and tries to reassure her when she is sent home.
Bronisław Wrocławskias Mario
Massimo's older associate, who tracks the rising danger from the rival family.
Why it matters
365 Days presents a kidnapping as a romance. A man abducts a woman, holds her captive and threatens to rape her, and the film treats her falling in love with him as the happy ending. Critics condemned it for romanticising kidnapping and rape, and it holds a rare 0 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. The singer Duffy wrote to Netflix's chief executive that it glamorised sexual violence, and petitions asked Netflix to remove it. Yet in the summer of 2020 it was among the most-watched titles on Netflix in many countries, and it spent ten days as the service's top film in the United States. That gap between what critics saw and what audiences chose is the real subject: the lasting pull of a fantasy of being chosen and overwhelmed, and the harm done when a story dresses coercion up as devotion.