Ppreviewed at Bari International Film of Bari, The return of Casanova Of Gabriele Salvatores – in theaters today – is one of his best films since I’m not afraid (2003). A beautiful story about disruptive force of cinema to replace realitywith the character-director of Tony ServilloAnd Casanovaunable to accept the passing of time. AND old age, which for an artisan of fiction corresponds to real life, life off the set.
The return of Casanova: the plot
Leo Bernardi (Toni Servillo) is an established director, grappling with a film he can’t finish. Because she is an artist who doesn’t want to leave the set: her life is cinema and with each finished film he doesn’t know what to fill the time with. Even if he has now met Silvia (Sara Serraiocco), a peasant girl younger than him, and love confronts him with an unprecedented situation.
At the same time, in his latest film, Leo chose to tell the Casanova Of Arthur Schnitzler, a character similar to him. Casanova too (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) has passed his youth, the times of glory are gone, together with his charm: by now it is the wrinkles and bluish veins that mark his body. Casanova, however, is a repeat offender in repeating his own character, not accepting the decline. In an attempt to seduce by deception Marcolina (Bianca Panconi), a young courtesan, will arrive at the most tragic of conclusions: he got old.
The duel between old age and youth
Gabriele Salvatores offers a film about life and cinema in their similarities and differences, framing the story of Leo in gorgeous black and white, and that of Casanova in color. To underline – perhaps too mechanically – how colorful the director’s life is thanks to the cinema, while the real one is grey, full of worries and dramas. It also stages, in one of the most beautiful sequences of the film, a duel between old age and youth.
Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Bianca Panconi. (Press office)
«Since my theater days I’ve wanted to work on the text of Arthur Schnitzler – He says Gabriel – one of the novels crueller over time and on the theme of the double. Instead of just telling Casanova, I relaunched by inventing Leoanother seducer, a director not so much in a creative crisis, but a human one. The fate of Casanova’s journey is failureLeo instead opens a small door to the future, thanks to an unexpected event in life, love for a woman». The film is in part autobiographical.
Toni Servillo: «Life runs faster than cinema
«The aspect that moved me the most about Casanova is not having foreseen aging – says Bentivoglio from Bari. Perhaps this element unites us because I have not seen my parents aged: I too was surprised by my aging. This aspect finally humanizes Casanova, compared to the character we all know».
«Leo tries to juggle between his profession and real life – he says Servillo. Suggesting that often life runs faster than cinema, turns around and says “maramao” to you. And that’s what Salvatores said in it The return of Casanova». Even through the physical decaywhich is «one of the most important elements on which he insists Schnitzler Tony continues. And Bentivoglio tells it extraordinarily in a scene in front of the mirror and in that of duel, in which two naked bodies confront each other: one aged and the other young».
Gabriele Salvatores: «The doctor had given me 4 years to live»
During a masterclass at Bif&st International Film&Tv Festivalunderway in Bari, Salvatores told of when in 1980 they had given him four years to live. “A doctor told me: ‘Try to put things right about him'”. Then luckily things went differently, the diagnosis was wrong. But it was thanks to that circumstance that Salvatores decides to become a director: «If I leave this hospital I do what I really like. That is cinema », he had promised himself. And so it was.
iO Woman © REPRODUCTION RESERVED