Liberato’s secret remains such, even at the end of the vision of «Liberato’s secret», naturally released on May 9th, to remain in cinemas for a week, after the preview in Naples, The Space, at midnight tomorrow, with the usual question: will the faceless singer appear? Will he blend in with the crowd? He won’t show up? Or hear?
Yes, because for the first time, in the film produced by Red Carpet and distributed by Be Water in collaboration with Medusa, we hear Illo speak. It is perhaps the biggest news, the real secret revealed. Mr. he reflects himself, even when he enters the vans that will take him to tame the crowds, even when he is accompanied by his very loyal staff. What he doesn’t say, they say: the director Francesco Lettieriwho signs the film with Giorgio Testi who took care of the live filming, and from the beginning signed the Newpolitan aesthetic of his video clips, to Brizio and the guys from Bomba Dischi, the label that built, step by step, the mystery of the ghost of the stage.
The documentary film starts from Naples and returns to Naples to finish, finding it in the midst of extreme tourism. The iconography of the boy hidden by ski goggles and the hood of his sweatshirt focuses on Naples, who claims the merit of being among the architects of the city’s media renaissance, of having brought his dialect and his attitude back to the crest of the wave. sings in a high-alcohol cocktail of neomelody, electronic, urban, rap, echoes of Pino Daniele, «Cicerenella» reloaded, the final verses of «Tammurriata nera», trap, Latin sounds…
Film within a film, secret within a secret, Liberato and his story become an anime, paying tribute to the protagonist’s passion for manga, Japan and the like, but perhaps also to a love story that ended because of the Rising Sun. But how much truth is there in the animations of Lrnz and Giuseppe Squillaci? Should we take those scattered throughout the plot as real clues, which are quite a few? A musician grandfather, high school at Genovesi, a first frustrated musical adventure despite the London experience, the love for a classmate, Lucia, who will become a manga designer, on the bill at the «Comicon» in 2015 and who however flies away to follow his dream in the land of the Rising Sun. In the bedroom of the boy Liberato, and then in other animated drawings, we find a poster by Pino Daniele, images of Burial and the Cure, the helmets with which Daft Punk disguised their identity… Right? False? Likely?
«As also in the most traditional of documentaries, the narrative opens up to suggestions of fiction, it becomes contaminated», explains Lettieri: «Liberato’s cultural background is true, he really had an artist grandfather, he didn’t study music but he always done and took time to be taken seriously.”
Yes, but we’re back to the beginning, so much so that the film also enjoys lining up the names of those identified in Liberato: from Emanuele Cerullo to Gennaro Nocerinopassing through Livio Cori. And he also enjoys making fun of himself when he shows the «MiAmi» operation. The first performance of the masked man in 2017, at the Milanese festival, brought on stage not him, presumably confused in the crowd to secretly see the effect his absence/presence had, but Calcutta (with its unlikely dialect), together to Izi, Prestlesse and Dj Shablo. Illo wants to introduce the film with his true mantra: «A Napule tutto quant’ tenimm’ ‘nu segret’. Every alley, every building, every wall has its own mister. There is ‘o secret’ ‘ro munaciell’, ‘a bella ‘mbriana, ‘o sang’ ‘and San Gennaro, ‘and pret’ ‘da pedamentina, ‘a siren Partenope, ll’ov’ sotto’ ‘o castiell’, ‘o segret’ ‘and Pulecenell’… And there’s ‘o segret’ mia”. And he wants to finish it like this: «Yeah, damn it, you’re pissing me off now because I didn’t tell you my name. But, in your opinion, after all, this idiot, did I say that to you? And jamme jamme, no little imagination. ‘O my secret, at the end, it’s my story, I finish this, this and this and then it’s done. ‘And the song, the mask, the anonymity, no secret boss ‘or they keep all of them… I look at the sea, I make love, I like Napule, I’m my friends, I make music . This is my secret. And or yours?”.
We are, again and more than before, at the starting point while the notes of the new «Lucia» scroll over the credits. Lettieri comes to our aid, or maybe not: «It’s a game for the fans, there are references scattered here and there, his difficulties in childhood, the failure of his first musical adventure, an encounter that led him to a turning point ».
Yes, but we could all be Liberato like that (which someone suggests in the film), even me. But no: «On February 14, 2017, when he published “Nine May” on YouTube, he certainly didn’t think he’d get this far. But if he got there, and we with him, it means that talent sometimes pays off. That day no one could have ever imagined Naples at the center of today’s media attention, a young and touristy city like Barcelona and Berlin. Yet these are two things that happened, and the second, perhaps it is also a little thanks to Liberato, no one can keep together “Cicerenella” and house music, roots and wings, tradition and electronics, Maradona and the Gaiola like him”, continues the director, who with the new postcard of Naples supplied first with the video clips and now with the film, feels like a co-protagonist and co-defendant: “We have given the city back a sunny, clean, romantic image . Now we risk trivialization and commodification, perhaps it was inevitable, perhaps not.”
Meanwhile, Liberato remains a secret, which the film confirms has been constructed with undeniable mastery: Pulcinella and the manga, «Era de Maggio» and the tunz tunz, the documentary and the animation. And then he, Liberato, with his dialect which at times seems forced but is certainly mastered excellently. And his gaze: after all, everything here is seen through his eyes, which we don’t see. And, for this reason, perhaps, they free our vision, despite the rogue curiosity of knowing who the fuck this Mister X is. And they force us tomorrow night, at midnight, to see if he will appear at The Space.
