The director competing in the Horizons section with Il paradiso del peacone: Dominique Sanda (who has lived for twenty years in Uruguay where she is a sculptor) reunites relatives for her birthday. In the cast Alba Rohrwacher, “the leopard-print daughter-in-law with ironic features”
There is a family where everyone has pre-established roles, before the clouds ruffle the sky with half-truths and naked revelations; there is a matriarch, Nena, played by the splendid Dominique Sanda, who celebrates her birthday and reunites her relatives. “At the beginning everyone talks about each other, one over the other, as if they were a bit of peacocks,” says Laura Bispuri, the only Italian female director who competes for an official prize at the Venice Film Festival. In competition on 5 September at Orizzonti (Vivo Film and Rai Cinema production) brings The peacock’s paradise.
It is for the first time at the Lido, after his first two films at the Berlinale. All three times with Alba Rohrwacher. In Sworn Virgin Alba was shy, holed up in her body, forced to live as a man, while in My daughter he had a completely different register, he screamed, he sang. Here is Nena’s daughter-in-law, she has ironic features, tries to set a tone and introduces herself “with the good sparkling wine that is not understood, she brings the wrong gift to the birthday girl, takes off and puts on the leopard-print fur coat because she doesn’t know if she is ‘height”. Nena has two children, one is the husband of Alba, the actor Leonardo Lidi, then there is Maya Sansa who has just left her partner, Fabrizio Ferracane, but does not say so in the family. And it is one of the “omissions” of this family where the speeches proceed by inertia and little obvious things, the smoke that hurts, the little tooth falling out of the child, the circle of Alba that makes her ears protrude. Loneliness is there with his clouded gaze, drowned in selfishness, in reticence.
There are many echoes and references to a style that remains so its, sharp and soft. The family of Scola? «A masterpiece – replies Laura Bispuri – but there is the melancholy of people who have not lived life to the full, here they made the choices as they wanted. The movie I have in my heart is Secrets and lies by Mike Leigh. In common there is the theme of unveiling, of the forbidden, of secrets… ». An unexpected event happens, the niece’s peacock, to chase the dove of a painting he is infatuated with, falls. “And everyone is forced to stop, to get naked, to mirror themselves with the feeling of loss, leaving the roles assigned at the beginning”.
Nena, used to giving order, to throwing digs, will be ready to let herself go, to reveal what she has kept hidden from her children for forty years. The husband (Carlo Cerciello) knew everything, he knew that the maid (Maddalena Crippa) represented something else for his wife. “They lived the same in harmony, in the light of day.” But the story is not trivialized in the past of the love triangle. It wasn’t easy to get Dominque Sanda: «Her agent didn’t answer the phone, I was stubborn, I looked for her. She has lived in Uruguay for twenty years, in a house by the sea that she made herself, she is a sculptor, I sent her the script and my films. Act in Italian. He says that on the one hand Nena has her obsession with order, on the other her reckless side ». She was tempted to ask her about the Garden of the Finzi Contini? “I had a crush on her for that movie. But when we work there is no pedestal. We became friends, see you on Skype ».
Maya Sansa has a “frontal” role, she goes with the boys still loving her ex, Fabrizio Ferracane, who is “the sympathetic one on duty, the in-laws that she loves; instead he leaves his new partner (Tihana Lazovic) outside the house, waiting for him, in front of the poster of a missing woman who looks like her.
And the peacock? «I imagined him as a symbol of beauty and vanity, he almost sacrifices himself to follow the impossible love of the painting».
From Berlin to Venice (in between awards in many other festivals). “There is rigor and low-key glamor there. I take Venice as a party for a film that I love and in which I recognize myself a lot, born in the race. I had a big production project on a political story that I had to postpone for Covid. At the age of 20, as a spectator, I went to the Lido on a camping trip. I said to myself: next time I’ll go back to the other side of the fence. I’ve always wanted to aim high ». And the red carpet? “Ah, I can’t wait to step on it.”
August 11, 2021 (change August 19, 2021 | 09:02)
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