Paolo Genovese, The noise of new things. Interview

Land couples in crisis by Paolo Genovese. There is a point where at a certain point we no longer communicate. At most, different languages ​​are used. There is that the feeling of the nest being built is more reassuring than exciting, and moreover as it should be when compared to the butterflies that once dictated the law inside and outside the belly. One fine day, the point on which you have leveraged to keep the marriage going appears for what it is: a lie (“for a good purpose”). An unbearable secret. A betrayal. A feeling of guilt.

All it takes is one meeting and the crack becomes visible. Repairing it with gold dust is not feasible, at least for Andrea and Andreina, Viola and Ralph, Umberto and Alba. Three equally happy couples. Unhappy, over time, in different ways. They don’t know each other but their destinies will cross. And they will do it in Milan, grappling with a deafening subject: life. Which sometimes throws without appeal, other times instead it definitely makes the appeal. In both cases it makes itself heard with The Noise of New Things, the title of Paolo Genovese’s new novel which seems like a ready-made screenplay, as well as the snapshot of the suffering couple.

Paolo Genovese and the trilogy on couples

His Perfect strangers is on the road in Italian theaters and here there are still couples in crisis.
I completed an ideal trilogy on the couple that I told in a pathological way in the first and in a physiological way in Superheroes: for some this was the result of my sense of guilt for all the couples I had made break up.

Here too it is no better. Umberto and Alba are hopeless: he is violent, she is a victim. The other couples are looking for balance. Andreina gives Andrea a kidney but she doesn’t want to give him a child. Ralph becomes a father but he will never know the truth.
Each couple harbors soul secrets that crystallize over time. Apart from Umberto’s story in which it is clear who is wrong, in the others we have to suspend judgment when faced with certain dilemmas. Which make noise. Yes, noise is something you can’t ignore. He arrives. You necessarily perceive it, it can be beautiful or ugly but it is new and changes a state of calm.

She has a beautiful family. Who inspires couples at the end of the line?
To stories that touched me. I started writing the book six years ago starting from a deleted scene from Perfect Strangers. Andrea’s secret that he wants to be a father was too cumbersome.

“But why is it so difficult to be happy?” says Alba. Are you pessimistic?
No, the search for happiness is a constant in every couple. Having the awareness that the couple is not perfect and accepting imperfection can be a landing point.

And then the children arrive

The novelty of the trilogy is the children, the watershed in couples. Here is Mirko, eleven years old.
I wanted to show how much parenting can or cannot complete a couple. And how much the search for a child can cause irreparable fractures.

In a relationship, what is the cement?
Esteem, the greatest aphrodisiac. Knowing how to see the other as an entity independent of the couple is interesting. And accept secrets and respect them.

Ralph is a sound designer and works with noises. Andreina uses her sense of smell and sight in the operating room. Long live the senses.
They make us feel alive. When silence comes, you die.

The loneliness of the couple according to Paolo Genovese

Sometimes message after message, noise after noise, you no longer feel alone within the couple. But welcomed outside. It’s right?
I have no answers, I just wanted to paint a portrait of a society that has changed too quickly. In the 1960s, being together was a given. The divorce came in 1974.

And today we have more choice.
But also more internal conflicts. If you have no alternatives you have no secrets. That is, you don’t have that part of your soul that screams to get out.

So everything is more complicated but everything is fine.
Any form of greater awareness and freedom is, however difficult, positive.

«Ralph feels good chatting with Alba, if only because she is so interested in his work, much more than his wife has been for years now. And then the crux is always there: when the curiosity or esteem of those close to us suffers a collapse, then even an unknown voice that gives us importance, that makes us feel good, can be enough to make us lose our way.” It is such a widespread drift that it seems normal.
Couples that work are those that accept changes. Does it mean physical intimacy? No, in the emotional one: she is the real key.

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