Confidence, film: plot, cast, review, Federica Rosellini

The couple returns Domenico Starnone-Daniele Luchetti started with The school in the 90s and continued to consolidate over time until Laces.

With Confidence (in theaters from April 24th), psycho-thriller on the nuances of human relationships from the novel of the same name by Domenico Starnone and written with Francesco Piccolo, the director also strengthens another partnership. The one with his fetish actor Elio Germano. But the real revelation is the female counterpart. Federica Rosellini, who returns to cinema in a leading role afterwards Where the shadows fall by Valentina Pedicini.

Rome, today: why does the elderly Pietro Vella (Elio Germano) get up and approach the window of his study? 90’s. In a high school on the outskirts of Rome Pietro Vella is a literature teacher respected and loved by his students. One will attract his attention, Teresa Quadraro (Federica Rosellini), the most gifted and cunning with whom he will end up falling in love. When she learns that after her high school diploma the girl gave up her studies to become a waitress in a restaurant, she decides to go and look for her. The two meet again, indulge in an overwhelming night of passion, love each other, and move in together. Pietro will help her to resume and bring gl to termsstudies in mathematics.

One day Teresa suggests they tell each other more unspeakable secretor, almost to seal the eternity of that love free from constraints or morals. From that moment on, things will change forever. The awareness that that confidence, if revealed, could completely destroy his life, pushes Teresa to disappear and move to the United States where she will become an established mathematician at the MIT in Boston. In the meantime, Pietro has become a model teacher. Conferences around Italy to talk about his “teaching of affections”, collaborations with the Ministry, wise men. And her marriage to her colleague Nadia Labaro (Vittoria Puccini), a meek and quiet mathematics teacher who sadly decided to delegate “the most interesting things” in her life to her husband. With her Pietro also had a daughter, Emma (adult: Pilar Fogliati), the culmination of a perfect life suited to one esteemed professor. Daughter who, a journalist, manages to get her father awarded at the Quirinale. Recalling his former student Teresa… Pietro looks out the window…

A journey into feelings and the psyche as Luchetti likes, great explorer of human dynamics. Here the story revolves around an unspeakable secret and takes on the disturbing hues of a thriller. On the one hand there is a man continually assailed by the fear of being exposed: Pietro. Torn between the fear of showing himself for what he is and respectable bourgeois morality, but also with that eternal need to be praised, pleased, loved. On the other, there is a woman, Teresa, free, independent, young, shrewd. A “wild and decomposed” creature, as Federica Rosellini defines it. Between dreamlike visions and dizzying flights of fancy, Luchetti investigates a toxic and narcissistic male. AND Confidence becomes the hallucinated and distressing portrait of a small, small, mediocre impostor man incapable of having an equal relationship with the women who will have the misfortune of meeting him. A layered and complex film which inside is many things. Reflection on the anti-bourgeois relationship with truth as an instrument of liberation. Visionary story and fresco on women, with the three female figures (Teresa, Nadia and daughter Emma) who become the natural counterpoint to the protagonist. All accompanied by Thom Yorke’s soundtrack, which works through contrasts and distortions.

At the beginning you were contacted for the role of Nadia, the wife: then what happened?

The audition lasted an hour and a half, we have made one scene, then a second until suddenly Daniele told me: “No. Sorry, but can I make you play another character?”. And that character was Teresa. I immediately fell in love with it and we improvised a lot, because in the book he is a barely mentioned figure. We wrote some scenes together, some were born from improvisation and in others there were things completely mine.

I put my interests into it. Lots of creatures that come from medieval bestiaries, and then the music. Because during the day I walked around and at night, to the delight of my neighbors, I rehearsed the Bizet piece that I mention on a pianola in a scene of the film. But there is also a lot of my restlessness, my wildness and my my relationship with loneliness. Teresa is an extremely intelligent woman and at the same time very carnal, physical.

The story revolves around an unspeakable secret. Has it been revealed to you actors?

They confessed to us a what Starnone had thought when writing the novel. But it worked that each of us thought of something terrible for ourselves. During the confidence scene, while Elio whispered in my ear what was a terrible secret for him, I pretended not to listen to him. In my head I reframed everything by thinking about something else.

He defined Teresa as “a wild and disordered creature”, capable of subverting social patterns. Unlike Nadia who delegates the most interesting things to men, she embodies a model of rebellion. Can we say that in addition to a film on the definition of the contemporary masculine, it is also a reflection on the feminine?

Absolutely yes. It’s a film about the strength of women, one litmus testand with respect to the condition of women today. On the one hand there is Nadia who stands aside, “let’s say that in this life you will be the one to do interesting things”. On the other hand, there is the feminine of Teresa who wants to eradicate the bourgeois norms with which we grew up and subvert a certain type of relationship of subjection to the masculine. I hope that the women of the future are the ones who will be able to say “goodbye dad”. Completely emancipating itself from the male gaze.

Have you ever met any Pietro Vella in your life?

Unfortunately, most of the men who approached me during the years when I was a student, he had that kind of approach. And I know I’m not the only one. I don’t see a positive figure in Pietro the teacher. His relationship with Teresa is ambiguous and if a professor is really neatit shouldn’t leave room for what happens in the film.

In an interview with Courier she said she considers the female body “resilient and politically important to inhabit.” Can you explain better?

I always say that if I were to be reborn, I would always be proudly reborn as a woman. I believe that today one is increasingly important defense and support of the feminine, to conquer new spaces of freedom. At a time when we are thinking of introducing conscientious objectors into counseling centers, it is essential to start again from the bodies and claim their freedom again.

Today, how would Teresa behave regarding the disagreements that are taking place in universities?

It would certainly be on the front line, also because it simply occupies my body and I would be on the front line. We live in a historical period in which there is a great need for courage and therefore, thanks to the new generations who try to have it. Good guys!

Do you envy Teresa something?

His relationship with the truth. I am a very direct person and although I deeply believe that the truth liberates, sometimes it scares me. And then I envy her mathematical ability.

He returns to cinema in a leading role afterwardsWhere the shadows fall. In between there was a lot of theater where as well as an interpreter she was also an author. Is the stage your comfort zone?

The theater for me is home and has always been a place of the soul, ghostly, almost shamanic. Cinema, on the other hand, is an incredibly human and cultural place a visceral honesty. At the same time, however, it makes me suspicious, the fact that there is mediation between the actor and the audience worries me a little.