Ua story of passion for music, of the search for freedom and female emancipation. Springfirst film by Damiano Michieletto (in cinemas from today 25 December)is set in Venice in 1716, and tells of a group of young orphans who learn to read, write and play at the Pietà hospital. They live in the shadows even when they play church on Sunday.
Among these is Cecilia, imprisoned within herself and eager, one day, to be able to meet the mother who abandoned her. The wind changes when maestro Vivaldi arrives at the institute. The music changes and Cecilia’s attitude towards herself changes. Finally someone “sees” his talent. The meeting with Vivaldi will spur her to seek the freedom she has never known.
Spring: plot of Damiano Michieletto’s Christmas film
The first work by Opere director Damiano Michieletto is loosely based on the novel Stabat Mater by Tiziano Scarpa. 1716. The Ospedale della Pietà is the largest orphanage in Venicebut it is also an institution that introduces the brightest orphans to the study of music. Cecilia (Tecla Insolia) is twenty years old, has always lived there, and is a very good violinist.
With her companions she performs every Sunday behind the church grates without showing herself to the public. They are all educated and trained in obedience, and live in the shadows waiting for a marriage to take them away: from that place and from music. It’s the rule: once married, young wives can no longer play. Cecilia has no intention of giving up her passion.
Michele Riondno and Tecla Insolia in “Primavera”. (Photo Kimberley Ross)
The arrival of Antonio Vivaldi (Michele Riondino) will change the young woman’s point of view student: it explains her to rebel against the imprisonment she has experienced up to that moment. And the new maestro’s music will help him savor life and freedom.
The film review Spring
The meeting between two solitudes (that of Vivaldi, a sick man in search of new sounds that stun like life, and that of the talented pupil Cecilia) is a detonator for both. The love for art stimulates both to confront each other and take a step towards freedom. A spring wind blows for Michieletto’s two prisoners, who take flight together.
Cecilia is a prisoner woman who, thanks to Vivaldi’s music, she begins to talk to herself and see beyond the mask she wears when she plays. Like Modesta ne The art of joyrebels against the rules, albeit in a less disruptive and extreme way, but with the same effectiveness.
Tecla Insolia and Michele Riondino. (Photo Kimberley Ross)
The music of Antonio Vivaldi is also the protagonist
Spring also tells the rejection of a suffocating and violent patriarchal system from a girl who has no intention of bowing to those who would like to steal her life. Music, even in this, gives her the strength to react: it is a narrative tool, vital character who sculpts the interiority of the protagonists in flesh and blood. The pace of Spring it’s an adage that suddenly rears its head when the new sounds of Vivaldi intervene in the hospital and Cecilia’s ardor for life is manifested.
Tecla Insolia. (Photo Kimberley Ross)
Spring: the cast with Michele Riondino, Tecla Insolia and Stefano Accorsi
Michele Riondino plays Vivaldi, a sick composer and priestwho agrees to teach at the Ospedale della Pietà because he is desperate and broke. Here he finds new stimuli and writes what – many years after his death – will be defined as his masterpiece: The Four Seasons.
Tecla Insolia is Cecilia, an orphan: he obsessively writes letters to a mother he dreams of meeting one day. His talent was appreciated only by Vivaldi who appoints her first violinist of the orchestra. From this moment his path to redemption begins.
The cast also includes Andrea Pennacchi, Valentina Bellè (in the role of a noblewoman who aspires in vain to play the piano). Stefano Accorsi is the Sanfermo officerto whom Cecilia was promised in marriage. But the young woman has no intention of accepting new imprisonment which would force her to give up the violin.