The new film by Gabriele Salvatores is entitled The Return of Casanova and opened the evening screenings at the Petruzzelli Theater in Bari, the place of honor of the Bif&st. Together with the protagonists Toni Servillo and Fabrizio Bentivoglio, the director accompanied the film to the Apulian capital.
Gabriele Salvatores He has the great advantage of being a director who never repeats himself: he never tells the same story, he knows how to switch from one genre to another with ease and can make a well-known actor or a newcomer the protagonist of a film. Besides, when measured against a novel, which is often the case, Salvators He always manages to adapt it to his vision while respecting his essence. In his latest film, which had its world premiere at the Bari International Film & TV Festival 2023, the director got on the nerves of the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler addressing the issue of old age, which does not coincide with the absence of desires and urges, but with the decay of the body. In the long story”The return of Casanova”published in 1918, there are many other ideas, but while I take them up and dwell on some of them, Gabriele Salvatores He chooses the formula of the film in the film and invents the character of a self-centered director named Leo Bernhardi who is working on an adaptation of the novel by slicer. Fiction and reality continuously intertwine in the film, fluently gliding into each other, the former in color, the latter in black and white. And if you pretend James Casanova And Fabrizio Bentivogliowho was mostly some kind of alter ego when not Antoine DonelFrom Salvators, Leo Bernhardi has the face of Tony Serviloin his first collaboration with Gabriel and like him a director (though in the theatre).
The return of Casanova opened, on Saturday, March 25, the International previews of bif&st. The film was presented on Petruzzelli Theater at the end of a day that started with the master class by Gabriele Salvatoreswho then received the from the festival Fellini Platinum Award for Cinematic Excellence. However, this morning in the Margaret Theaterthe director presented the film not only to the press, but to a large lay audience, which applauded for a long time Salvators and its actors, including prostrate photographers, a couple of kids sleeping peacefully in their strollers, and even a cute little dog on a leash. Salvators opened the dance at the invitation of the presenter Henry Magrellitalk about the idea of The return of Casanova: “The return of Casanova From Arthur Schnitzler that’s been in my heart and my head for a long time, ever since i’ve been doing theatre. I read the novella with great interest at the time because it covered a wide variety of subjects. I was particularly interested in the topic of doubles. The author had developed it in several works, for example in “Double Dream”. In the years that followed, I discovered many more things about the story, such as the theme of the passage of time. As he rightly says Toni, ‘The return of Casanova‘ is one of the most ruthless works about the passage of time. slicer he even invents a duel scene between them Casanova and a young lieutenant who fights completely naked, and Casanova he only realizes that he is old when he sees himself lying lifeless on the ground in the opponent. This element got me very thoughtful, and I thought I could revive the concept of the doppelganger by inventing another seducer that isn’t Casanova but the director, whom I then entrusted Servilobecause the director is somehow a seducer, he has to be, and so my story became the story of a director who is not in a creative crisis but in a dead end on a human level.”
Also Tony Servilo has something to say about his Leo Bernhardia man who was laughed at a lot Gabriele Salvatores: “Someone said that life happens while we are busy with other things. Leo Bernhardi he is obsessively concerned with his film, with his vanity, with his career, and while he is doing this and always has been doing this, life takes up space, approaches him and so on Lion tries awkwardly to juggle what he believes to be his whole life, which is his job, and real life, which is lovemaking with a younger girl who has nothing to do with the world of cinema. In this respect, I would like to add that, in my opinion, the film is an excellent inspiration. It worries me that 7 out of 10 young people want to be either a director or an actor, but God knows how much skill we need in so many other professions, and the film suggests that at certain moments life is probably going faster than cinema , then he turns to him and says, “Maramao,” and that’s exactly what happens to him Leo Bernhardiis this Gabriel tell it gracefully.”
Tony Servilo knows the story well slicer, and even he considers it almost wild when he describes the transformation of the body: “The return of Casanova it is not a film about lost youth. Both the novel and the film insist on the physical decline that comes with age, and they do it in an awkward way Fabrizio he tells it very well in a scene in the mirror and even more extraordinary and generous in the duel sequence, in which no longer two characters, or rather two rivals in love, confront each other, but youth and old age. The movie from Gabriel He has the merit of displaying a great deal of irony and self-mockery on a romantic subject. We had fun teasing each other a bit, which made my character a vain full of frivolities. It’s part of a universe we know well, and that leads me to say that it’s nice when you have the opportunity to give a character something of yourself or people you know well. But sometimes the exact opposite happens: a character is so extraordinary that he is the one who lends you something and enriches you. And so I believe that in that energy transition from actor to character and character to actor, there can be a third that stands out on stage or stands out on a movie screen.”
TO Fabrizio Bentivoglio it is rather the task to speak of it James Casanovahis character, whom he treated with affection: “What moved me James Casanova it is his aging completely unprepared. Since I haven’t seen my parents age, I’m surprised, even amazed, to see them age. Casanova can’t get over it and I think that’s basically the element that makes him human.”
The ball goes back to Salvatorswho still has something to say James Casanova: “One of the things that impressed me the most Casanovawhile I was writing the script was that the character is actually doomed to fail in his attempt to repeat the same script over and over again. The character of toneson the other hand, has a certain social and artistic status, but ultimately opens a small door to the future through meeting a woman.
Leo Bernhardiwhich contains a homage to in the name Bertoluccilives in a domotic home or smart home. At some point something goes wrong and it almost seems as if the rooms in which people live and work have a life of their own. Gabriele Salvatores explains the reason for this choice: “This is the first film in which I talk a little bit about myself. It is not an autobiographical film but the first in which I lay out some of my fears, my fears, my doubts and the questions I have made myself over the last few years. One of them concerns the domotic house that I bought three years ago. The fact is, I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of technology taking over, but basically all independent American science fiction of the ’70’s talked about it, starting with Philip K Dick. And so I ask myself: is there reality or is there fiction? Is life a dream or what? We are made of the same stuff that dreams are made of – he said Shakespeare, and maybe he was right. I say that if we give too much space to technology, sooner or later it will replace us. It’s something that frightens me as much as it worries me to think of a house capable of feeling the melancholy of its owner. It might even exist, who knows? I console myself with the fact that there is one thing that will never happen. They tried using artificial intelligence for artwork and they came up with crap. Luckily, the soul and emotions are a uniquely human prerogative, so they will never belong to technology.