2023-10-18 20:13:28
by Stefania Ulivi
The actress presents her first work «There’s Still Tomorrow» with Valerio Mastandrea, Emanuela Fanelli and Vinicio Marchioni: «A bit of drama and a bit of comedy»
Paola Cortellesi has known many women like Delia, the protagonist of her directorial debut There’s Still Tomorrow, set in Rome in the spring of 1946, the opening film of the XVIII Rome Film Festival. «I discovered them in grandmothers’ stories. Women who built the social fabric of our country in the immediate post-war period but were never celebrated. Many Cinderellas who have always been considered and were the first to consider themselves nothings. It was an era in which in popular environments like the Testaccio courtyard where I filmed, there was no awareness of the discrimination or violence they suffered.”
Where did the choice to move to the other side of the camera come from, from your experience as an actress?
«No. When I act my only scruple is to be part of a beautiful story. The desire to direct rather comes from my work as a screenwriter. They had proposed it to me years ago, and I felt the need for it. I wrote it with Furio Andreotti and Giulia Calenda, my inseparable traveling companions.”
Do you play Delia, mother of three children, at the mercy of a dull and violent husband, Ivano (Mastandrea) an overbearing father-in-law (Ottorino, Giorgio Colangeli) for whom she acts as a carer, who seems to accept her life as it is?
«I have a thing, let’s say a bug, which is women’s rights. I tell of a moment in which they were not yet recognized, in a past that is part of the stories of the elders of my family. The tales of the courtyard, of those who were beaten, of those who didn’t have anything to eat, dramatic things told with lightness and that very Roman disillusionment that I liked to stage. I remember those stories in black and white, mixed with the films of that era.”
In which Anna Magnani was often the protagonist. Is it an homage, like the choice of black and white?
«They are not quotes but you cannot ignore that world. Even in the settings. The house in which they live, which we rebuilt with the set designer Paola Comencini at Cinecittà, resembles that of Bellissima. But the film is not my homage to neorealism. It’s all a scam…. I go into the past to talk about a female condition that is no longer like this but preserves cultural legacies, dangerously alive and vivid today. Let’s say: a contemporary film set in the 1940s.”
She filled the cast with people she is very close to: Valerio Mastandrea, Emanuela Fanelli, Vinicio Marchioni.
«It’s a first work, I had very clear ideas but I needed family support. The cast is made up of people with whom I have such confidence that it has allowed me to approach less shyly.”
They describe her as a tough director.
«I know what I want, I knew every shot from the script. I knew well what I wanted to achieve. But I asked for three weeks of theater rehearsals to fine-tune the interpretations and the characters.”
Delia has a husband who beats her and a father-in-law who urges him to do so (but not always “otherwise he’ll get used to it”…). But the violent scenes are resolved with a sort of choreography. Why?
«I wasn’t afraid to show real fights, an action director would have done it with strong scenes and blood but more than the physical consequences I wanted to underline the psychological ones of systematic, daily violence. Faced with which she defends herself by getting used to it (“the ballet starts again”). The bruise is there but then disappears, as if nothing had happened. And this is the most serious thing, because it indicates the normality of violence. It seemed stronger this way. We studied the psychology of domestic abuse, the starting point was to debase women. ».
Describes dull men.
«Valerio was generous in agreeing to play this infamous individual who is not the ogre who wrote it on his forehead, who you recognize. This is a normal guy, an idiot. Better not to make an apology for the villain but to show his idiocy, so as to be able to mock him. It is not a film against men but against the social and cultural cages they put you in.”
We also laugh a lot, the tone of the film, in theaters from 26 October, is somewhere between drama and comedy.
«The double register is the language I know best. And yes, this was there in those films that we loved so much. I hope the audience has fun, enjoys it. And that no one reveals the ending ahead of time, linked to a mysterious letter that Delia receives.”
He got a taste for it: a new direction soon?
“I’d do the third straight away, so I’ll skip judging the second.”
October 18, 2023 (modified October 18, 2023 | 8:13 pm)
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