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'Hotel Portofino' Recap: Season 3 Episode 1

Daniel Hautzinger
Bella in a colorful shirt
Bella is preparing for the arrival of her father and sister. Credit: Eagle Eye Drama

Hotel Portofino airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream by WTTW Passport members. Recap the previous and following episodes.  
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It has been two years since the dramatic events at the opening of a casino by an American mobster. Bella, Alice, and their staff have just said goodbye to their last guests of the season and are preparing for the arrival of Bella’s father George and sister Amelia at the hotel. There is a new year-round resident at the hotel, too: Constance’s son Tommy now lives there, passed off as part of the Ainsworth family. Billy no longer works at the hotel, and has been replaced by Salvatore, the onetime construction worker to whom Betty is now engaged. Paola is seeing Salvatore’s former colleague Bruno. Lucian is traveling the world; Bella hasn’t heard from him in some four months. Bella now concocts her own beauty products such as lotion for the guests.

It is Rose’s birthday, so Constance cleans the young woman’s tomb and Bella visits with flowers. Rose’s suicide upended everyone’s lives. Despite finally warming to Count Albani, Alice hasn’t seen him for two years, due to travel back and forth to England for Rose’s funeral and various other complicating circumstances in both their lives.

Bella hasn’t seen Cecil for two years, either. They have agreed that they will warn each other in writing if they ever want to visit, but Cecil has broken that promise and shown up at the hotel – right before Bella’s father and sister are due to arrive. Cecil is traveling through Italy with Nellie, the young daughter of his American stockbroker, and her cousin Zelda – and he’s doing much more than just accompanying Nellie to museums. He plans to marry her – it helps that she’s rich – and she is pressuring him to file for divorce from Bella so that they can move forward with the nuptials.

Bella tries to shoo Cecil away before her father arrives and fails. George is delighted to see Cecil, who is now a viscount, to George’s admiration. The two men ran into each other in London, and Cecil is now handling some investments for George. They get drunk together at the hotel, and George asks Bella when she’s going to return to England to live with her titled husband.

But Bella has no intention of leaving Italy, as Cecil knows. Nevertheless, she’s shocked by his request for a divorce. It could ruin her reputation and thus the hotel, especially with her antagonist Danioni always looking for any excuse to interfere with her life.

Cecil asks Bella to consider the divorce while he jaunts off to Florence with Nellie – but Bella insists that he stay at the hotel, now that her father has seen him. She won’t be able to explain his absence. The pouty and pampered Nellie is upset, but Cecil promises to rejoin her and Zelda in a week in Rome, once everything is sorted.

Bella’s estrangement from her sister Amelia is even longer than that from her husband. Betty, who worked for George before following Bella to Italy, doesn’t know why the sisters aren’t close. Bella can’t recall the last time she saw the widowed Amelia, but Amelia knows off the top of her head: the day after Val’s funeral, six years ago. Bella apologizes for not writing or visiting, but Amelia recognizes that the hotel clearly takes priority over everything else for Bella. She tells Bella that her father wants to talk to Bella about his textile business, and told Amelia not to mention anything about it.

Bella later warns George to be wary about trusting Cecil with his money, and George angrily snaps at her before quickly apologizing.

Bella finds time to sneak into town to visit her lover, the architect Marco, to tell him about Cecil’s request for a divorce. But one of Danioni’s thugs follows her – Danioni had been surprised to see Bella in town the other day when she was leaving Marco’s home early. The thug is spotted by Bella and Marco, however, and Marco chases him back to Danioni. Marco tells Danioni that he and Bella were consulting on more work on the hotel. Danioni summons Marco to his office later that week – he might be working outside his license.

Cecil, Alice, and Amelia have also gone on a trip, to the bigger town of Genoa. Cecil needs to call his stockbroker – Nellie’s father – to ask him to sell off one hundred thousand pounds of stock so that he can offer it to Bella as part of the divorce. The stockbroker advises against it – the American market is up and down. (It’s 1929, after all, not that the characters know the Depression is coming.)

Alice and Amelia spend their time in Genoa shopping for clothes. Alice is shocked to see Count Albani – arm-in-arm with a woman. Their encounter is uncomfortable.

Constance is also a bit awkward and reserved when she goes out with Vito, a handsome friend of Bruno’s whom Paola has encouraged Constance to see. Betty watches Constance’s children while she and Paola spend an afternoon with Vito and Bruno. Vito speaks exceptional English – he wanted to learn chemistry, and the best textbooks were in English. But Constance rebuffs his offer of another date – until Paola accepts it for her.

Back at the hotel, Alice asks Bella why Cecil has returned. Bella explains that he asked for a divorce, and Alice gets upset by the scandal it will cause – and the damage that will do to her.

Cecil returns to the hotel with a gift for Bella: a bottle of a perfume she loved from the hotel where they spent their honeymoon decades ago. (Forget the fact that he has been staying there with his new lover, Nellie.) It’s to sweeten a request: he needs a signed affidavit from Bella saying she committed adultery, complete with a name and date, so that the divorce can move forward. She’s furious that he wants her to take the blame and won’t admit in writing that he also has committed adultery. But he says that Nellie’s father won’t allow her to marry a named adulterer. Bella throws the perfume bottle at him.

Later, Cecil is summoned – or, really, strong-armed – into visiting Danioni. His business partner is now not just a prominent Fascist in town but also the representative of the American mafia in Italy, having taken over from Farrino. He would like to make more money from the whiskey importing business he and Cecil run with the mafia, by getting a greater share of Cecil’s profits – and he has photos of Cecil kissing Nellie to blackmail him into it. He sends Cecil away with a request for an invitation to the hotel, where they can finalize details.