(ANSA) – ROME, SEP 4 – Italian actress Barbara Ronchi told the Venice Film Festival Thursday that Elisa, the eponymous heroine she plays in Leonardo Di Costanzo’s competing film based on the true story of an amnesiac sister-killer, was a “restless character in transformation”.
Elisa is the fourth of five Italian pictures competing for the Golden Lion, along with The Great Beauty helmer Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, which opened the festival, Pietro Marcello’s Duse, Franco Maresco’s A Film Made for Bene, and Gianfranco Rosi’s latest documentary Sotto le nuvole.
“I was struck by the words in the screenplay, but ultimately we didn’t know exactly where this story would lead,” said Ronchi ahead of Elisa’s showing. “My character, Elisa, simply felt the need to talk about herself as if she hadn’t done so in years.
She then discovers that her guilt could transform from a passive feeling into an active one. Her crime is paradoxical: taking a life to have one for herself.” The film will be in movie theaters Friday.
In it, talking to Elisa, a murderer with no memory, is a criminologist, Alaoui (Roschdy Zem), who gently presses her into the semi-freedom home where she lives.
Through these encounters, thanks to the timely dialogues of the screenwriters (Di Costanzo, Bruno Oliviero, and Valia Santella), Elisa’s memories begin to take shape, and for the first time she glimpses the first step toward a possible redemption.
“I’ve been studying guilt for some time, but in this case in a transformative dimension, that is, considering this character above all as a human being in need of redemption,” said the director.
“It’s a film about guilt that can be healed,” said Di Costanzo.
(ANSA).
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Elisa is the fourth of five Italian pictures competing for the Golden Lion, along with The Great Beauty helmer Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, which opened the festival, Pietro Marcello’s Duse, Franco Maresco’s A Film Made for Bene, and Gianfranco Rosi’s latest documentary Sotto le nuvole.
“I was struck by the words in the screenplay, but ultimately we didn’t know exactly where this story would lead,” said Ronchi ahead of Elisa’s showing. “My character, Elisa, simply felt the need to talk about herself as if she hadn’t done so in years.
She then discovers that her guilt could transform from a passive feeling into an active one. Her crime is paradoxical: taking a life to have one for herself.” The film will be in movie theaters Friday.
In it, talking to Elisa, a murderer with no memory, is a criminologist, Alaoui (Roschdy Zem), who gently presses her into the semi-freedom home where she lives.
Through these encounters, thanks to the timely dialogues of the screenwriters (Di Costanzo, Bruno Oliviero, and Valia Santella), Elisa’s memories begin to take shape, and for the first time she glimpses the first step toward a possible redemption.
“I’ve been studying guilt for some time, but in this case in a transformative dimension, that is, considering this character above all as a human being in need of redemption,” said the director.
“It’s a film about guilt that can be healed,” said Di Costanzo.
(ANSA).
Read article…
