‘Our’ Valeria, much loved in France, arrives on the stage of the Buñuel room, in the Palais of Cannes – where her performance is scheduled Rendez Vous with critics and the public – dressed informally, with jeans, a white shirt and a simple plain blue jacket: her natural friendliness immediately shines through, through her smile, bright eyes and all-Italian gestures, despite part of her origins being Greek , however Mediterranean.
Thierry Frémaux, general delegate of the Festival, presents her with great warmth, citing her among the many actresses who in this and past editions have passed on the other side of the camera, becoming excellent directors (among the debuts of 2024, Lætitia Dosch must certainly be remembered , present this year with the unmissable The dog trialin the Un Certain Regard section), adding to and enriching the panorama of the voices of female cinematography at the Festival.
Valeria Golino herself, recalls Frémaux, was selected for Cannes, in Un Certain Regard, with both of her films as director, Honey (2013) ed Euphoria (2018), and returns to the Croisette this year for a special appointment: in fact he has just adapted a TV series The art of joyproduced by Sky Studios and HT Film, the famous novel by the Sicilian writer Goliarda Sapienza, which stars, among others, Jasmine Trinca, Tecla Insolia and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi.
The novel tells the story of Modesta, a girl, then a woman, vital and uncomfortable, devoid of morals according to the conservative and patriarchal culture of the time. While still a child she was sent to a convent and then to a noble house where, thanks to her talent and intelligence, she managed to become an aristocrat through a marriage of convenience, continuing to seduce others, women and men, throughout her life. , to seek pleasure, to subvert established rules.
The Art of Joy: a free and disobedient female character
Before getting to the heart of the Rendez-Vous, the first episode of the TV series is presented as a world premiere The Art of Joy, created on the occasion of the centenary of the writer’s death, which will be released shortly in Italy, first at the cinema in two parts (30 May and 13 June) and then on Sky.
The episode is greeted with long applause and the historical reconstruction and the choice of protagonists are appreciated. Present in the room were Jasmine Trinca, in the role of the superior mother, and the very young Tecla Insolia in that of Goliarda.
‘You have to be careful with Valeria because, with her attractiveness, she can be a little manipulative’ – adds Frémaux jokingly – ‘Perhaps because the Art of Joy sometimes needs to be manipulated a little to help it emerge’, Valeria replies.
The first question the interviewer asks Valeria concerns ‘how much and why it was important for her to adapt this novel and make this series’.
“I had at least twenty reasons to adapt this book – replies the director – perhaps the main one is that in the novel there is a female character, Modesta, different from all those of not only Italian but I would say world literature, so disobedient, so outside the rules, so rare to find, because her characteristics are generally typical of men, of male protagonists and not of female ones”.
As for directing, she was asked if being filmmakers, rather than actresses, offers a different vision of filmmaking.
“Yes, it changes everything, there is an overall vision, there is something very different and enormously exciting. I understood, for me who also wrote and co-wrote the series together with other screenwriter friends, that making a series for television is very different compared to writing for the cinema.”.
“I tried to create an erotic, intimate, physical wedding between television and cinema – Valeria continues – I like cinema because it is the anti-plot, it is telling and examining what is not a plot, what is useless in the story, what appears useless. On TV we need to tell the facts: cinema was an enormous school for me, my editor Giorgio Franchini then helped me put the different parts together… it took time to write and rewrite Goliarda, because the film asks you things that seem important to you while you do them… it’s like a living animal, it’s a great school from which you learn a lot.”
Valeria is then asked if Goliarda Sapienza’s style as a writer is also a very particular one.
“Yes, because even Goliarda, in her writing, is like her protagonist, she is disobedient, disorderly, a continuous contradiction, graceful or angry music, it is a leaving and then returning for different stories. Goliarda does as she wants, she has incredible freedom in writing…She was a guilt-free human being, she was free from this idea, that helped her. She certainly has had a great pain, that of never having seen his books published during his lifetime, which instead were published after publication and sales first in Germany, then in France and only at the end in Italy.
This book, The Art of Joy, is the first part of 4 books: she, Goliarda, is the thousand characters she describes, she is one and a thousand other characters together, she had a lot of time available to write. The book testifies to a subject that is still very very modern: in fact it testifies and allows it to emerge female eroticism forcefully, like one of the scabrous characters, we talk about the toxic family, about sensuality. Her book was filtered through our stories, but she changed us, she was ahead of me…”
Valeria remembers the very vivid descriptions in the book which she tried to draw inspiration from: Etna, the mountain, the light, the convent, her poor house, the rich house where she went afterwards. The help of the photographer Fabio Cianchetti, also Bertolucci’s photographer, was fundamental,
As for the choice of her actresses, Valeria stated: “Jasmine Trinca is my favorite actress and I use her in all my films, while Tecla is at the beginning of something, it’s like a gift that God gave me“.
Valeria Golino director: I love characters with ethical doubts
Valeria talks about why she started making films late as a director.
“I started being an actress very early, I was 17 years old and I had the opportunity to do a lot of cinema as an actress but then I felt the desire to think about the form of cinema, the lights, the point of view. I made my first film at 45…I asked myself why…inwardly I was afraid, as a woman…but then I took courage, I wanted to do it sooner, I had a kind of modesty. My characters always have doubts, ethical choices that interest me, when I find subjects like this who don’t give solutions, certainties, but talk about issues, interesting themes in terms of ethics, morality. In Italy morality and Catholicism can certainly influence more than elsewhere”
On her freedom as a director Valeria responds: “It’s nice that others say about us that we have great freedom, it’s often the perception of others that acts as a mirror to us, when people say ‘it’s a good film!’ then it’s nice, a job is done. I hope I don’t just do it for others. After 40 years of work you have so much experience and you form your own point of view, even on the mediocrity of others. Doing ‘Miele’ changed my life, it changed my imagination, I like to be responsible for everything and pay attention to everyone.”
On the directors who influenced her, as a director and female director, she replies:
“Speaking of female directors, I don’t like to make it just a gender issue, but it’s true and it must be said that there are such powerful directors in recent years, for example in France, and it’s very, very nice that things are changing. I would continue to steal a little from everyone, it is not illegal to steal art and everything is filtered by the different personality of each one, there are stories that are told and change every time… for example the fact that Modesta was chained was not in the novel , but I heard it from a relative in Greece in Patras: he said that a child was so pestiferous that they tied him to the wall, he told it to me laughing. The stories tie and mix together and become part of a single story.
For future projects: “Now I’m completely inside this story and I don’t think about anything else but on June 17th I will make a film as an actress with Mario Martone, guess what? On Goliarda Sapienza and I will be the protagonist”.
