TO halfway between historical fresco and melodrama, on first TV this evening at 9.20pm on Rai 3 goes on air The shadow of the day. Drama film with Riccardo Scamarcio and Benedetta Porcaroliprotagonists of a love story set in the late thirties, a few days after the announcement of the racial laws wanted by Mussolini. The film was also the set within the set of the tormented love story between the two actors. Started again a few months ago after the abrupt breakup last year.
The shadow of the daythe plot of the movie
Set in Ascoli Piceno in 1938, on the eve of Italy’s alliance with Hitler’s Germany, the film has protagonist Luciano (Riccardo Scamarcio). Fascist sympathizerlike most Italians at the time, and owner of Caffè Melettithe most important restaurant in the city.
Isolated from social life, limping and far from any form of political militancy, one day the man meets the beautiful Anna (Benedetta Porcaroli). Cute and cultured young girl looking for a job as a waitress who often stops in front of the restaurant window.
Luciano hires her and, very soon, it begins to have an important feeling for her. Anna returns the attraction, but he carries with him a secret that he doesn’t want to reveal. Especially to Luciano.
A love story in the fascist era
Written in a solid and balanced manner by the director Giuseppe Piccioni together with Gualtiero Rosella and Annick Emdin, The shadow of the day it’s a film that tells a crucial era of Italian history through the gaze of two “lateral” protagonists.
Set almost entirely inside the restaurant, the film is a story without sentimentalitydespite the potential melo. The painful story of the characters emerges from the details and silences.
By choosing a small provincial town as a point of observation of the tensions of Italian history, the film it describes the atmosphere of imminent danger very well perceived on the eve of the promulgation of the racial laws. And she intelligently brings together moments of extreme lightheartedness with others growing tension given the political situation.
And yet, in addition to the historical fresco, The shadow of the day it is (above all) a great love story. That of two solitudes that meet and inevitably attract each other. Piccioni tells it in a spare and measured way, fallowing the feeling that arises between Luciano and Anna to emerge through the looks, the unanswered questions and the fears that can be read on their faces.
With the complicity of Riccardo Scamarcioalso producer, Luciano’s character is the most complex and multifaceted. A personality split between moral duty and emotions of the heart that the Apulian actor interprets with class and restraint. Benedetta Porcaroli’s interpretation is more immature, a little too “modern” and linked to TV series.
Riccardo Scamarcio and Benedetta Porcaroli: a passion born on set
Filmed in February 2021 in the midst of a pandemic, The shadow of the day it was also the theater of birth of the love story between the two protagonists.
Benedetta Porcaroli and Riccardo Scamarcio at the photocall of the film “L’ombra del giorno”. (IPA)
A passion that literally overwhelmed the lives of the two actors, both engaged in other relationships at the time. In fact, Riccardo Scamarcio – after a very long coexistence with Valeria Golino which ended in 2018 – he had been married to Angharad Wood for just over a yearBritish manager with whom he had his daughter Emily in 2020.
Benedetta, on the other hand, had been doing it for a long time steady couple with the director and actor Michele Alhaiquemet on the set of the series Baby and former partner of actress Greta Scarano.
Despite the 18 year difference, and their respective cumbersome pasts, Riccardo and Benedetta they lived their story in broad daylight until the sudden breakup, two years after. The actor is back with Wood While Benedetta had a flirtation with Pietro Castellitto on the set of Aeneas, directed and performed by him.
After a few months, and a new round of gossip and photos, Scamarcio and Porcaroli were photographed together again. The actress has confirmed, albeit in a cryptic manner, the return of the flame in an interview with this newspaper and, a few days ago, the two were immortalized by Diva & Woman to go shopping together in the center of Rome. Confirming a reborn and increasingly overwhelming love.
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