Dafter the passage to the Venice Film Festival, Aeneas by Pietro Castellitto – his second film as director and actor – comes out in cinemas today. The story is that – tender and ruthless at the same time – of a couple of bourgeois, party-loving 30-year-old friends dealing with drug trafficking bigger than them. A film that, despite some imperfections, certifies the skill and originality of Sergio’s eldest son and the writer Margaret Mazzantini.
Aeneasthe plot of the movie
Enea (Castellitto) is the son of a bourgeois family from northern Rome and owner of a sushi restaurant. The he spends his days with Valentino (Giorgio Quarzo Guarascio), a lifelong friend who recently obtained his aviator’s license.
Bored and nihilistic, the two young people they attend the most exclusive parties in the capital and deal cocaine. In the background there is Aeneas’ family: the psychiatrist father (Sergio Castellitto), the mother is a TV journalist (Chiara Noschese) e his little brother Brenno (Cesare Castellitto), a problematic high school student.
Everything comes to a head when Enea ends up in a drug trade that’s bigger than himand which turns out to be very dangerous, but the boy can count on Eva’s love (Benedetta Porcaroli).
Cesare Castellitto, Benedetta Porcaroli and Pietro Castellitto. (Vision Distribution)
A visionary and introspective film
After his directorial debut with The predators in 2020 – thanks to which he won a David di Donatello as Best debut director –, Pietro Castellitto, born in 1991, returns for the second time at the cinema with a story along the lines of The Hyperboreanshis debut novel, and set in context of Rome well.
Produced by Luca Guadagnino, Aeneas speaks of «a generation of bourgeois adults – Pietro said at the press conference – who has always led their existence with dignity, but he has lost the sync of desire, of happiness.”
«I tell the story of the bourgeois conflict but I wanted to free myself from the cliché that the apathetic bourgeois family generates nihilistic children. Aeneas’s family is full of humanity. Aeneas for me is a romantic hero”.
Mixing surreal tones with moments of strong introspection, Castellitto abandon the grotesque nuances Of The predators in the name of an oblique and layered narrative. Chiseling a truly particular portrait of today’s 30-year-oldsin a contemporaneity lost in a romantic decay.
The ambition is perhaps excessivethere’s a lot of meat on the fire, but Pietro has courage to spare. Especially when proposing a cinema outside the box which doesn’t resemble the average Italian production at all.
The flirtation, now over, between Castellitto and Benedetta Porcaroli
The set – filming took place between January and February last year – it was the set in the set of the brief, much paparazzi-covered acquaintance between Pietro and Benedetta.
At the time, she had recently broken up with Riccardo Scamarciopartner since 2021. He, however, had concluded, by mutual agreement, the love story with Matilda De Angelisnow engaged to Alessandro De Santis of the duo French Saints (among the Bigs of Sanremo 2024).
Benedetta Porcaroli and Pietro Castellitto at the “Enea” photocall at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. (Getty Images)
After a few months, and with a new round of gossip and photos, However, Benedetta is spotted with her ex Scamarcio – who had in the meantime returned to his partner (and mother of their Emily) Angharad Wood.
The actress herself took care of clarifying this in an interview with this newspaper. Where, without too many turns of phrase albeit with some reticence, he admitted that «We love each other very much with Pietro now, the flirtation is over. And with Riccardo, what do you want him to answer? Yes, here we are, we make very long phone calls.”
As for Castellitto, however, no new love on the horizon yet.
Who is Giorgio Quarzo Guarascio aka Tutti Phenomeni
Rapper and singer-songwriter born in Rome in 1996Giorgio Quarzo (the curious second name due to his mining engineer father) Since he was a high school student he has been passionate about music. Entering the trap collective Tauro Boys with which he creates self-ironic and surreal songs such as Breakfast in Cortina And Too much revenge.
After leaving the group, Giorgio chooses Tutti Fenomeni as his pseudonyma name intended to mock the delusions of grandeur of many trappers, and he approaches songwriting. Also thanks to the complicity of Niccolò Contessa, frontman of the Roman band I Cani.
Pietro Castellitto and Giorgio Quarzo Guarascio in a scene from “Aeneas”. (Vision Distribution)
The debut album arrives in 2020, Funeral goodsa record that moves between electro-pop and indie with influences ranging from Depeche Mode to Lucio Battisti. Two years later he published it Rare privilege, second album with sounds similar to the first and which contains the beautiful duet Antidote to death with the Baustelle frontman Francesco Bianconi.
Waiting for a third album, expected at the end of 2024, Giorgio Quarzo made his acting debut in Aeneas almost by chance. «Valentino was born first and foremost from the extremely imaginative pen of Pietro – he told the portal The Wom –. He and I didn’t know each other before but, according to him, during a block while he was writing the screenplay, it seems he chose to get to know me through my songs».
The cast of Aeneas: father Sergio and brother Cesare
In addition to Benedetta Porcaroli and the talented Chiara Noschese, in the cast of Aeneas I’m well there two members of the Castellitto family.
The entire Castellitto clan on the red carpet of the Venice Film Festival. From left: Anna, Sergio, Margaret Mazzantini, Pietro, Cesare and Maria. (Getty Images)
Dad Sergio plays Aeneas’ father. «I tried in every way not to make a film with my father», declared Pietro in Venice, «but the character of Celeste he travels on an ironic emotional frequency that no one would have intercepted better than him. Maybe just Adam Driver.”
Still at the Lido, Sergio added that «When Pietro proposed the film to me, I thought it would be the hundredth: it seemed like a loving sign to me.”
As for instead brother Cesarethe youngest child of the Castellitto-Mazzantini family, the 18-year-old is making his absolute debut in front of the camera. Still a student in high schoolwe know little about the boy, except that he is a huge Roma fan. As documented his Instagram account full of posts from the Olympic stadium.
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