What would the singer, or rather the rock star, have done? Gianna Nannini he decided this at the age of 7, at the rehearsals of the Mameli anthem. «The day they kicked me out of the choir». Too anarchic, too out of sync in every sense, Gianna, her teacher must have thought of her, not imagining that she was thus showing her a path: her father dreamed of her as a tennis player. «I realized just by seeing the film – You are in the soul Of Cinzia Th Torriniproduced by Indiana, arriving on Netflix on May 2nd, starring Letizia Toni, ed — how bad I was. Then and there, however, I looked at the sky and thought: but how? She seemed to me to be so good. Too bad for them. And I made a promise to myself that I would sing.”
As already in the autobiography published in 2016 (My dicks, re-edited by Mondadori), in Torrini’s film – the two have known each other all their lives – Nannini, who wrote it with the director, Cosimo calamini and Donatella Diamanti, talks about herself without hesitation. The loves, starting with the meeting as soon as he arrived in Milan from Siena with Carla (Selene Caramazza), who later became his lifelong companion. But also the one of her with the young photographer who compared her to Janis Joplin. «We had parallel lives, both provincial. I share his mantra: never compromise yourself.” No self-censorship even on familiarity with drugs (but in the scene in which young Gianna tries cocaine we already understand that, unlike her beloved Janis, it will only be an experiment). Conflicts in the family, the arguments with his father Danilo, a confectionery industrialist, horrified by the album cover California with the Statue of Liberty holding the stars and stripes vibrator. (“He didn’t want me to sing, for him it was no good”). But the most touching moment is the last farewell to him, played by Maurizio Lombardi. It is the portrait of a unique artist, outside of any box, capable like few others of hitting the heart (Mara Maionchi, here Andrea Delogu, understood it first). Even with harsh lyrics like that of Died from self-inflicted abortionof dazzling relevance.
The film revolves around the tale of another key day. «The one where I was really born, in 1983. In Cologne», explains Nannini, 70 years old on June 14th. She was already known, more appreciated in Germany than in Italy, thanks to America and California, she worked on the next album, Latin Lover. With the pressure of the record companies hunting for a new hit. Too much even for her: a vertical collapse, hallucinations and psychotic and panic attacks. «I’ve experienced madness, the loss of control, I was lost.” But after that crisis she found herself. «At university I had studied psychiatry, it was the years of Basaglia and Laing. It was an initiatory journey, into other dimensions. Having seen the darkness brought me much light. And, in fact, I wrote many hits afterwards.” Photoromance, Perfume, Beautiful and impossible, The Males. «Success is a miracle, a magic that doesn’t come on command».
Not a miracle but a beautiful reality to have found the right interpreter: Letizia Toni, discovered by Torrini after an endless search. A story, that of Nannini, which can be a warning for many young people, says the Pistoia actress. «Her collapse was a fracture due to the pressures of the recording system which imposes canons and stereotypes». Which were too tight for Gianna at 7 years old.
Tags: Gianna Nannini freewheeling film Descents ascents loves excesses conflicts successes
