Michele Riondino protagonist of the neorealist fantasy “Our ghosts”, at the next Venice Film Festival: “I don’t know how to manage mourning, but I struggle to keep my child”
The strange case of Michele Riondino. Destined to enter the factory, like his father who worked at Ilva in Taranto, he dreamed of becoming a rock star, he was the “godfather” at the Venice Film Festival where he is returning with a film, but above all he is a normal person, with a simplicity that he does not flaunt, he believes in the social function of his profession, not inclined to compromise. I accept “The Young Montalbano “ having overcome “a certain skepticism, I didn’t want it to sound like a marketing operation. I talked about it with Andrea Camilleri, who reassured me, and they satisfied me with my request to accentuate the Sicilian speech compared to Luca Zingaretti ”
Until recently, he was often offered 25-year-old roles and he is 42. But he says that it hardly happens anymore, and it doesn’t happen at all in the character of Valerio, one who gets around, sells refrigerators and washing machines. Then he finds himself a widower, without those jobs anymore, without a home and with a child to raise. Sometimes a little is enough to find yourself off the rails of normalcy, and people start to look at you wrong. Valerio is the character of Michele Riondino in “Our ghosts” (Riccardo Di Pasquale production for Fenix Entertainment and Rai Cinema) expected at the Festival, at the “Venetian Nights” of the Authors’ Days.
Father and son (little Carlo, played by Orlando Forte) They take refuge
in the attic of the house from which they were evicted. The father invents a game to hide the truth from the child, and it works for a while… A trick that remembers “Life is Beautiful” from Benigni, don’t you think, Michele? “That’s a beautiful story and you can’t help but love father and son. I didn’t want the same piety, Benigni tries to bring happiness to a Nazi concentration camp and we only see his true face at the end. I immediately show a face of suffering. It is a reverse path ».
Director Alessandro Capitani defines him as a fantasy neorealist. The themes there are many, work and home, but also the loneliness and mistreatment that the young mother (the Israeli actress Hadas Yaron) undergoes where the two will find momentary support. «I don’t make a model father – says the protagonist – but neither do I arouse antipathy, it is not so much a question of poverty as of inability to manage the loss, the lack of a wife. It is an inadequacy to be a parent ». That child must have a normal life, say the social services, strangers who in the blink of an eye must make fundamental decisions in the lives of others, and often the pieces remain on the ground.
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Valerio must be quick in his alibi in order not to have his son taken away. I have followed news stories, they are stories that leave you unarmed, I don’t mean to have no faith in the institutions, but we relegate the task of correcting. But institutions are made up of people who have to manage other people: sometimes they cause worse damage than the wounds they are called upon to heal ». But why in the cinema of the last twenty or thirty years have fathers been absent, superficial? «I agree, we work on the stereotype. We actors are happy as soon as they give us the role of a villain, a junkie… It’s more fun. The fact that I have become a father leads me to reflect on the father figure in cinema. I would not like the idea of an inattentive father to come out of this film: he is unable to manage mourning, which is different ».
He has been to Venice many times, the greatest emotion is that of him, young spectator: «The beauty is to stand in line with people, waiting to enter the room, and talk about cinema. Time and space cancel each other out for ten days: a bit like when I was backpacking or traveling in a camper and exchanging information about places with people I didn’t know ». This idea of ”exchange”, of public service according to the legacy of Strehler-Grassi, lives it in a different form, both when he plays in the theater and when he performs with his group, Revolving Bridge. «I play the guitar and I sing. Rock’n’roll with a strong punk trend. But also Celentano, Elvis Presley. We invite the audience to take the stage and sing with us. At that point, the gaze on the actor Riondino who is a musician does not “exist” ». Via the «exoticism», they look at it with a different eye, one like many others. «They are improvised situations, beer festivals, village festivals. I believe in the active spectator, standing there waving with us ».
August 18, 2021 (change August 19, 2021 | 08:30)
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