CANNES Valeria’s special gaze, her magnetism frames sensuality, voluptuousness, feminine eroticism, the desire that is embodied. Valeria Golino says that «in three weeks I will start Mario Martone’s film on Goliarda Sapienza. It’s a closing circle.” He is in Cannes as director of the series The art of joy, based on the scabrous novel by Goliarda Sapienza (1900-1996). A femininity outside the box, “phantasmagorical, morbid, revolutionary”.
The series will be in theaters in two parts, the first from May 30th and the second from June 13th, before being broadcast on Sky, producer of the project: «No one could give us the freedom that they gave us», says Valeria. The renunciation, the pride, the violence of man on Modesta (Tecla Insolia), an anti-heroine flayed by life who in 1900 comes from nowhere.
Free, amoral…
«She lives like a wild woman and doesn’t know the limits, she eats with her hands, she speaks in dialect in a Sicily without a sea. And then she finds herself in the orphanage of a convent, a novice under the protection of the mother superior (Jasmine Trinca), before being kicked out, ending up in the sumptuous home of “Jasmine’s” mother, Princess Gaia (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). . There is something in Modesta that concerns me, she is Barry Lyndon whose subtitle is a worthless hero, she is Frankenstein, a hundred women live in her, it goes beyond that.”
How are you transgressive?
«As a little girl, as I told you in the past, I stole from department stores in America, and I won’t tell you my mother’s cries. Then I smoked a few joints, even not when I was so young. But I’m someone who tries not to create fractures, I don’t have that kind of insolence. I am more docile than it seems: but I am not intellectually and ethically.”
Let’s start with the novel, someone has compared it to Pasolini.
«But he was censored, Goliarda’s book, which was more marginal, was rejected. The first time I read it it disturbed me, I felt it was something alien to me. Then I couldn’t find the key to how to make it into a film. I met Goliarda at 18, she was my language coach in Citto Maselli’s film Storia d’amore in 1986, she died ten years later. I was too young, I didn’t really understand it and that’s my regret. Goliarda looked for beauty everywhere, she had continuous intuitions, an amphibious intelligence, of land and sea.”
An actress who directs other actresses.
«But I also touch the actors, I catch them, I pat them. I have carnal intercourse with them, male and female>. She stops, jokes. I said to Tecla: don’t report me. I saw her self tape and I said to myself, what does she have to do with Modesta. I had done the casting of other gypsies. Then they told me that she sings, okay ‘let me hear it. I wouldn’t have taken it anyway. She sang I fell in love with you and she stopped time.”
She has two friends in the cast.
«Jasmine, well, even though physically in the novel she is blonde and with blue eyes, I can never do without her, I even dreamed of her, she has the right ambiguity and vehemence. And it is difficult to define Valeria’s unpredictability. I thought she was too young for that role, I was reluctant. She then said to me: give me an audition. It was already her, she was already making the film. Valeria is like a thoroughbred horse that has to run, you put the reins on her and her power condenses.”
What do you think of the misunderstanding declared by Carla Bruni towards her sister Valeria Bruni Tedeschi?
«Carla’s outburst to Belve on TV? Valeria has always made films about her family, sometimes it can be annoying for relatives. These are normal discussions that happen. There is complicity between the two of them, they love each other. In Valeria’s films I play Carla, who loves to drink, in a graceful and sometimes painful way.”
Have you, Valeria, learned the art of joy?
«My nature goes beyond joy, I look for beauty somewhere. I live in the present, now and here. I have a reluctance to remember. The past concerns me less and less, and I remember less and less.”
How is it on the red carpet?
He smiles: «The annoyance and the way to expose yourself in a frivolous way always looms large. But there is a part of me that is a little more vain, when the photographers shout Valerià, I turn towards them and say: here I am.”
Valerio Cappelli
.
An actress who directs actresses.
. He stops, jokes. I said to Tecla: don’t report me. I saw her self tape and I said to myself, what does she have to do with Modesta. I had done the casting of other gypsies. Then they told me that she sings, okay ‘let me hear it. I wouldn’t have taken it anyway. She sang I fell in love with you and she stopped time>.
She has two friends in the cast.
.
What do you think of the misunderstanding between Valeria and her sister Carla Bruni who…
.
Have you learned the art of joy?
.
The red carpet?
.
Valerio Cappelli
