IN QUESTA PAGINA
- Coup! by Austin Stark, Joseph Schuman
- L’experience Zola by Delphine Girard
- Semidei by Alessandra Cataleta and Fabio Mollo
COUP!
Director: Austin Stark, Joseph Schuman Country: Stati Uniti Running Time: 98′ Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon, Skye P. Marshall, Faran Tahir, Kristine Nielsen, Fisher Stevens
Coup!, the directorial debut of Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman and starring Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Magnussen, and Sarah Gadon, closes the Venice Days out of competition. Taking his cue from the Covid period, in which many affluent New Yorkers had taken refuge with their servants in their Hamptons summer homes to face quarantine, Stark imagines this tale set in the Spanish-American period of 1918. In Coup! a progressive journalist and his wife, an upper-class woman, barricade themselves in their seaside estate. Still, the new cook tries to exploit the situation with his fellow workers, and the owner suspects the Coup is part of an even more sinister plan. It is “the story of a master and a servant vying for power. It looks at the class struggle and the cultural divide that has persisted in this country for centuries,” the director explains.
Vania Amitrano
L’EXPERIENCE ZOLA
Anne, a theatre director, has just separated and is moving. Her new neighbour, Ben, is an unemployed actor who immediately takes an interest in her, but she no longer wants to have relationships. However, when she decides to stage Émile Zola’s L’assommoir, she offers him the role of Coupeau, reserving for her the role of Gervaise. And the line between reality and fiction begins to blur.
“Anne Barbot and I trained together at the École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq,” says director Gianluca Matarrese, now transplanted to Paris for more than 20 years but a frequent festival-goer with his documentaries and short films. Just last year, his Pinned into a Dress opened Critics’ Week. “We both question the notion of perspective and the porosity between reality and fiction. Anne’s theatrical adaptation of Émile Zola’s L’assommoir seemed to me an excellent structure for a film that is a dialogue between the narrative of the stage play and that of the actors behind the scenes.”
Alessandro De Simone
SEMIDEI
2023, Paese Italia, Regia Fabio Mollo e Alessandra Cataleta
I Bronzi di Riace «un monito contro tutte le guerre»
«Un presente lungo 2500 anni» è, per Alessandra Cataleta, quello in cui lei e Fabio Mollo ci accompagnano col doc Semidei, presentato alle Notti Veneziane delle Giornate degli Autori. Il film (prodotto da Palomar col sostegno di Calabria Film Commission) connette infatti varie epoche a partire dal ritrovamento dei Bronzi di Riace nel 1972. Indagandone il valore nella memoria calabrese e, sposando l’interpretazione che vede nelle due antiche statue greche una rappresentazione del conflitto fratricida tra Eteocle e Polinice, il valore di «monito contro tutte le guerre», sottolinea Cataleta, «Sia quella più vicina a noi, in Ucraina, sia quella che ogni giorno si consuma “silente” con le morti dei migranti in mare». Un messaggio di pace e riscatto attraverso l’arte che tiene insieme i tanti materiali del doc (inclusi brani dei film I dimenticati di De Seta e 12 dicembre di Pasolini) e le storie contemporanee di persone (i “semidei” del titolo) che in Calabria «vivono la loro resilienza, la loro volontà di restare sul territorio», aggiunge la regista. Per Mollo, originario di Reggio, i Bronzi «hanno molto a che fare con l’istinto di raccontare una storia: sento che sono nati da una mano che aveva un’urgenza narrativa». Per ricordarci, probabilmente, «che le guerre sono inutili».
Emanuele Bucci
