Margherita Buy: Nanni Moretti, Il Sol dell’Avvenire, Cannes and My daughter

Re-entering the world of Nanni Moretti afterwards the excursion in a foreign land of Three floors, as the spectator will do in a few days and as did the reporter who saw the film in preview, reassures (because as she says Silvio Orlando who this time plays an editor of theUnit faithful to orthodoxy: “In the end, the only way to find out how Nanni is is to see his films.” Luckily he seems to be fine.)

Margherita Buy does not back down in the face of Netflix

But returning to that world is also a little moving: we would like to have the tenacity that Moretti puts into defending an idea of ​​cinema on which he is not willing to give up an inch, nor in front of Netflix executives talking about slow burnerstory arc and what-the fucknor in front of the young author who is about to film an execution in cold blood («The scene you’re shooting is bad for cinema!»). The producer of the new talent with a brilliant debut (Orcs) And Margherita Buy, Moretti’s wife of 40 years in fiction, in her fifth film with the Roman director in her life and at least on one occasion her alter ego (how else could he have uttered the line: «Today I only shot close-ups, but I had a bit of a fight with everyone»?).

The appointment with her is in a café in the Trieste district. Margherita is in battle gear, they are waiting for her on the set. Hers, as a director, for real, for the first time.
Order a green tea. The waiter also brings some biscuits. “This is a very good pastry shop.”

Morettian choice.
I live above. I’ve moved many houses, but I’ve never moved out of the neighborhood.

The regrets of politics

I remember the first interview I did with her: it wasn’t far from here. Her daughter of a few months slept in her cradle.
And he wouldn’t let me sleep. She is now 21 years old…

The sun of the future it is a film about the passing of time, about regrets, many concern politics. But with fixed points. Moretti says it clearly: «In life you have to have two or three principles».
It is no coincidence that Nanni has called actors with whom he often works, like me and Silvio. I believe that we, after all, represent his principles.

Nice to be Moretti’s princes, challenging though.
Our long history of work and friendship perhaps reflects what we should be according to him. He likes to hang out with certain people. I called him earlier, I said: «Look, I have to do the interview today». “Say what you want.”

Curious, because the interviews with him are real palimpsests to which one goes back and forth, which always take a few days.
It gave me confidence, that’s how I interpret it. I think Nanni this time wanted to reaffirm her love for cinema, even if time passes. Some of us, however, remain the same.

The interviews, real suffering

The scene filmed in the Netflix offices clearly says that time has passed.
AND a funny scene, but we all experience this idea that films should be made on the basis of slightly ridiculous buzzwords, for better or for worse.

She didn’t fall for it, do you also have two or three principles?
There have been no great attempts at seduction, I don’t give the impression of being so corruptible, they leave me alone. But I don’t want to point fingers and say that all platforms are bad. But the choice that Nanni made for Three floors, not to give in to streaming when the theaters were still closed due to the pandemic, and waiting to program it at the cinema was the right one. A sign of coherence with its history. And in this film he basically explains it well.

The sun of the future it forces us to reflect on politics, starting from 1956 and continuing up to today… He sighs, why does he sigh? Are interviews such a pain?
Terrible, but it gets worse. There is the dentist.

For the generation to which he belongs, it is impossible that he hasn’t been involved in politics, that he hasn’t dreamed of a better world.
But we didn’t carry that dream forward, we are the generation that created this company. We must have made some mistakes. We have moved away from politics, we thought we could always recover the situation, but now perhaps it is too late. Indeed, we are also going back on some things, the issues that affect women.

Have expectations on MeToo waned?
I don’t know, I don’t want to talk nonsense, but I don’t see a real change. Perhaps something has even worsened: communication between men and women for example, and this has created a real inability to understand. Before we communicated more, perhaps struggling, struggling, trying to make room in a world of males. Now we don’t understand each other anymore. And we don’t talk to each other.

Where do you see this?
I see it in the younger generations, even with my daughter: among her peers there is little desire to listen to each other, she also has difficulties with her university classmates, there is division, there are no ideals that are pursued together. Maybe I’m talking nonsense, maybe it’s just my impression.

There are beautiful archives in the film. The ending of Sweet lifefor example, with the greeting to Marcello Mastroianni by Valeria Ciangottini, angelic girl, symbol of the generation to come, with respect to that world of lost souls that Fellini recounts…
It is the same greeting that Nanni will give later… There are many references to Fellini in the film. Nanni’s, as before Fellini’s, is a cinema that dreams, which opposes those who limit themselves to cynically recounting what is happening in the world.

Cynical films, like the one her character produces. As Henry rain of blood?
It is that violence that has taken over the dream, the invention. In the Sun of the future there is all the pain for a cinema that no longer exists, which Nanni carries forward with his work and with the choices he makes at the Sacher, his Roman cinema.

But do you watch the cinema “that has taken over”?
I keep away from it. If I see psychological violence, blood, someone shot on the ground, I jump to the cartoons. It’s not an ideological question, it’s a psychological one. But I understand that there is a respectable art form that also contains this apocalypse.

Daughter’s vocation as an actress

Your daughter is entering this world. She could go her way.
She will go my way! He has a fascination for this world, but he will follow it in her own way. She is attending the National Academy of Drama.

The one that she also dated. A vocation born thanks to Andrea Camilleri, a professor at the Academy at the time.
Caterina, on the other hand, hasn’t received any suggestions from anyone, she is doing everything by herself and has also taken the scholarship. The academy evidently restored awareness to her for a choice that she had already made anyway, but almost without realizing it. Studying there repositions you as an actor, there’s theatre, the classics: even if she chooses to do more contemporary things, she will do so with a different conscience. Then I hope that his will be an international career, which I did not succeed.

He didn’t want to do it. I don’t think they didn’t ask for it.
It’s me who didn’t make it, I didn’t have the character. My daughter has lived abroad, she speaks languages, she knows how to be in the world.

There are psychoanalytic sessions in the film and your character says: “I don’t want to talk about sex.” A modesty…
Which is Nanni’s modesty.

But there were moments especially at the beginning of his career, in Extraordinary performancein which there was an eroticism…
They immediately turned it off.

Would you like to try again?
Hard to say. It was I who censored myself a bit, because maybe I didn’t consider myself up to it. Or maybe I didn’t feel free enough and objectively I’m not. Then I became a nun… (Out of this world by Giuseppe Piccioni, it was 1999, ed). I’m a little sorry, the male audience is a pillar on which many actresses build their careers, but I haven’t been able to do it. (He laughs). And now…

Director’s first film

You are making your first film as a director (the story of a group of people determined to overcome their aviophobia, the fear of flying)…
Let’s not talk about it, we’ll talk about it later, maybe I’ll burn everything, getting into debt for life.

The director usually does not go into debt.
It’s not for sure. I have such a strong critical sense that if I saw that I had done something unthinkable I would give everyone back their money.

Among the roles he played for Moretti was Moretti himself. In My mother she was a director and let herself go into a wonderful outburst of hers in which she accused the crew: «The director is a str… and you allow him to do everything!». Now that you’ve crossed over to the other side, do you allow yourself to be questioned?
Of course, too much. But the idea that you write something and that everyone moves at your will for that thing to be done is dangerous, it takes hold of you.

Produces hubris?
How do you live afterwards, when it’s all over? With the toast at the end of filming everything ends, you keep snapping your fingers but no one does anything for you anymore. For now I don’t take advantage of this bonus so much, I’m pretty calm, but I understand that if you put your feet up and scream, you may get what you want. Also four elephants (as in The sun of the future, ed).

She too felt a melancholy, a sense of regret within The sun of the future?
Yes, there is necessarily. Nanni is melancholic, he was born this way. I was born like this too. We meet. In him there is always this thought addressed to his mother who torments me every time, because that is an unfillable void. We all pretend to be very strong and instead…

Among the fragility of his character is that of not being able to leave, to close a 40-year love story. Is leaving always difficult?
It takes great anger. I had an example in my family, my aunt who, at an advanced age, decided to separate from my uncle. In the family they looked at her bewildered: “You’ve come this far” they said. “Finish the course.” But no, I understand her, hers was a choice of great dignity, you can always rebel against a difficult situation, until the end, continuing to live wrong stories is the worst choice you can make in life. And luckily closing things down is the first step in moving forward.

(Take the biscuits).

I have to go to Fiumicino. I’m for the journey.

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