Adam Driver is Ferrari, film about Enzo’s life: cast, plot, story

dafter Gina Lollobrigida e Commanderat the Venice Film Festival 2023 it’s the turn of another Made in Italy “product”: Enzo Ferrari. Michael Mann’s biopic about the founder of the Cavallino car company, isolated in 1957 yeara moment of financial crisis for the brand, the fight with Maserati, the illegitimate son Piero Lardi (had with Lina Lardi)of his wife Laura armed with a pistol (a painful mother together with her husband for the mourning of her son Dino), of the massacre that took place during the XXIV Mille Miglia in Guidizzolo (province of Mantua), following the explosion of a tire of the Ferrari 335 led by Spanish Alfonso de Portago.

So a film about a precise point in the life of Enzo Ferrari (interpreted by Adam Driver); but also a great deal of Emilia, i.e. Modena, the headquarters of Ferrari, many sweet landscapes, tortellini, period posters, vintage chests of drawers, and entrepreneurial shrewdness. Shot in an exemplary way by Michael Manncult director with very little indulgence in rhetoric and lover of racing scenes (in 2019 he shot Le Mans ’66 – The great challenge).

In the cast, in addition to Driver, there are Penélope Cruz (wife Laura), Shailene Woodley (Lina Lardi) Patrick Dempsey (the pilot Piero Taruffi) Jack O’Connell (pilot Peter Collins), Daniela Piperno (Enzo’s mother), Sarah Gadon (Linda Christian) e Gabriel Leone (the pilot Alfonso De Portago). Ferrari is based on the novel by Brock Yates Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine.

Ferrari: «Why is it important to tell Enzo’s story today?»

«Because», says Mann at the press conference, “It is a profoundly human story. When you get close to a character as charismatic, as operatic as Enzo was, the more you discover him the more his characteristics are universal. That is, chance, tensions, loves, in short, life».

With Adam, Michael met about a year before filming: «I then read the script on the life of this character, how he was moved by the pain of losing his son, and pulled from all sides. From his wife Laura, from Lina. I didn’t know much about it, to tell the truth, but it seemed like a role to accept without second thoughts».

Instead Patrick Dempsey – in the film he is the pilot Piero Taruffi, almost platinum white hair version – was more familiar with the great Enzo. «I had already read a first version of the script 10/12 years ago. And it seemed to me one of the best scripts on the racing world. I absolutely wanted to be a part of it, so when I learned that the project had come to life I actively campaigned to get cast».

“Why 1957 in Enzo’s life?”

«Many of the conflicts in Enzo’s life occur precisely in that year»Mann explains. “Ferrari almost bankrupt, the lost son and the one who would like to be called Ferrari, the shipwrecked marriage, everything is grandiose and miserable, which is why it is very interesting”.

One of the most successful scenes in the film is, of course, that of the Mille Miglia race as a car disaster that mows down nine people, including 5 children and many others injured. Was rebuilding it difficult, given Michael Mann’s minimal experience in the racing world? «I wanted to give maximum intensity, because when you run, everything around you disappears. And then Enzo was particularly fond of racing, in fact he said that, unlike Maserati, he built racing cars and then for sale ».

Is there a specific reason why Adam Driver never drives a Ferrari in the film? “They didn’t let me drive a Ferrari for insurance reasons,” replied the actor. Making a movie is a miraculous process and they didn’t let me touch the most expensive accessory on set. I’ve driven some cars in pre-production, yes, but the only thing that makes me touch, when there’s something expensive in a film, is the sandwiches».

After Gucci, Ferrari: the Italian passion of Adam Driver

“To make films like these, you have to go to the places where the events took place,” says Adam. “You have to understand its culture. You are forced to empathize with someone very different from you, to observe his life from a certain perspective. We drove Ferrari in Modena, where you can clearly see how his story has marked the territory: hence an enormous sense of responsibility ».

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