2023-11-25 21:40:03
by Valerio Cappelli
The actress will be awarded at the Turin Film Festival. «I’m in a film where as a submissive I transform and beat males. I was the most desired in Italy. The boys feared me: I always gave them a second chance.”
«For a long time they called me to be a beautiful statue», says Manuela Arcuri, who about herself, from her physicality to her ability to manage herself, marched a bit and played with it a bit. She had disappeared: «I became Mattia’s mother ten years ago. First there was my son and that was it. Now I’m back.” At her Turin Film Fest they gave her the Golden Ciak which allowed her to turn her short film, Domina by Devid D’Amico, into a film.
«She is a woman who beats men professionally. She was a housewife with two children and a husband who beat her. And I think of feminicides, they are men who can’t bear to not let us down. In the film I am submissive, I transform to the point of dominating men. I dress in latex and carry a whip, I go to places where masochists pay to be whipped. I have a black bob between Louise Brooks and Valentina from Crepet. There’s nothing sexual about it.”
She was the most desired girl in Italy.
«In 2002 People magazine included me (first Italian) in the ranking of the ten most beautiful women in the world. I was 23 years old. The year before I was the most clicked by Italians on the Internet. Playboy dedicated a 52-page article to me. They placed my statue in Porto Cesareo: put up, removed for violating the landscape, restored, I don’t know what happened to it.”
Were the boys afraid to court her?
«Yes, they felt I was unattainable. I said to a boyfriend: I’ll give you a second chance. I adopted it as a method. Then there were those I had to keep at bay, never serious situations, except for a boy who left Sicily and was stationed in front of the house in Latina. I gave him the phone: mistake, I had to change it. I didn’t report him, he didn’t use it at the time. I also happened to court men, I laughed, I joked, the best of me.”
«Family of oilmen. He had seen me in a magazine.”
Did he choose it from a catalogue?
He laughs: «In a nutshell, yes. He had the goons who helped him look for me for hotels and travel. We met in Saint Tropez. He was cute, nice, he started the story slowly, I introduced myself with a friend. He was a handsome man of about 35, in Italy he dressed European, when we went to Dubai he was an Arab. I was supposed to become his third wife. It couldn’t last. I opened my eyes, the story ended.”
At least he will have given her amazing gifts.
«Rings, bracelets, no more beautiful than the ones my husband makes for me. I remember the great luxury, in the desert in a Ferrari. But there were even more beautiful cars.”
And then there were the footballers, Sardinia: any regrets?
«On the one hand, yes, there was a lot of lightheartedness, thank goodness I lived those years there. I returned to Sardinia last summer, I stayed in the area, but for a different type of holiday, with my son. Things change”.
Your family of origin?
«I was born in Anagni. A Ciociara girl who grew up in Latina, her father from Calabria, a factory technician; mother from Avellino, primary school teacher.”
«Apprehensive. I took some time to spend with Mattia. With Giovanni, my husband, there is complicity. The first time we got married in Las Vegas, the master of ceremonies spoke limited English and I didn’t understand anything, who knows what I said. A year and a half ago we got remarried at the Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano, I was in white, I wanted tradition.”
The passage of time: war or peace?
«You have to feel beautiful about yourself. I do biostimulation needles that nourish the skin. Machines have come out that I recommend: they have a lifting effect without a scalpel.”
What effect does it have on you to debut at the most serious, rigorous, cinephile film festival…
“I’m proud. I followed another path, but I have always been an actress, not a showgirl. Ferreri, Verdone, Pieraccioni, Salemme… Then the fiction, first and foremost the Carabinieri, and the TV kidnapped me: the real soldiers called me colleague. I did that series in the first year that women could become one. Twenty years ago the cinema-fiction divide was clearer. There was more jostling, today the fields and possibilities are greater. I experienced prejudices, they said if you are beautiful you can’t be good. It’s no longer said: it was law at the time.”
«Yes, making a film with the early Almodóvar, colourful, picturesque. The regret is The Postman with Troisi, I did the costume tests but I was too young. I said no to Tinto Brass for Monella, I was a minor, I was ashamed, I didn’t even know what he wanted. I am simple, and less plus-sized in every sense.”
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November 25, 2023 (modified November 25, 2023 | 8.39pm)
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