ON THIS PAGE:
- Se posso permettermi – Capitolo II
- Allégorie citadine
SE POSSO PERMETTERMI – CAPITOLO II
Italy, 2024, Director Marco Bellocchio With Fausto Russo Alesi, Barbara Ronchi, Rocco Papaleo, Giorgia Fasce, Filippo Timi, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Fabrizio Gifuni, Edoardo Leo Running Time 30′
In this sequel to the short film Se posso permettermi made in 2019 in Bobbio, Bellocchio tells the story of Fausto, an inert man, who over a day, sees a paradoxical procession of visitors parade: the mellifluous priest of the village, a mysterious man with his absurd ghost-themed business idea, the captain of the Carabinieri who proposes a shotgun wedding with his daughter, who has become pregnant by a stranger, and a pair of thieves who enter the house. Fausto surprises them but reassures them that nothing is left to steal because everything has been sold. The three have nothing left to do but chat until the sun rises. “It is a sad and amusing farewell (I hope it is) from a house where I have lived so many years of my life (since childhood) and where I have filmed so many times (it is the house of Fists in the Pocket),” Bellocchio commented. “It is a definitive farewell (will it be?) of a man, Fausto, who is a bit like me, my brother Alberto, my brother Piergiorgio, all my brothers and sisters and my children Pier Giorgio and Elena”.
Tiziana Leone
ALLÉGORIE CITADINE
Venice 81 – Out of Competition
France, 2024 Director Alice Rohrwacher, JR with Lyna Khoudri, Naïm El Kaldaoui, Leos Carax Running time 21′
Last autumn, French street artist JR created a spectacular work in two acts on the construction site to renovate the Palais Garnier at the Opéra de Paris. It is called ‘Retour à la Caverne’ and is a homage to Plato’s myth of the cave. The façade of the building first becomes the support for a canvas on which the Parisian artist draws an enormous trompe l’oeil, opening up, in effect, a gigantic cave in the centre of the Place de l’Opéra. A few months later, the second act completes the work: a theatrical performance with musicians and dancers dancing on the vertical stage of the façade. Alice Rohrwacher saw the performance and was fascinated by it and decided to collaborate with JR to expand on the idea with a short film. ‘We met in Paris and started to discuss the Allegory of the Cave set out by Plato in the Republic’, the two directors of the short movie Allégorie Citadine explain. – The myth imagines humanity in chains, facing the bottom of a cave, observing the shadows moving on the walls, and believing this is reality. Reflecting on this theme and having the ideas of the cavern, the dance and the city around us firmly in mind, we wondered what would happen if we all managed to turn towards the cavern exit. What if that prisoner was Jay, a seven-year-old boy? Perhaps it is not enough to say that images are illusions as long as the chains that bind us are real’.
Claudia Giampaolo
