“If I saw her on the street with the desire to preserve her youth and be beautiful at all costs, I would despise her because of her clothes, but when I played her I loved Pupa, this porn star who is boiling in Rome lives.” This is how Valeria Golino speaks about her character, very unconventionally, in “I told you so” by Ginevra Elkan, already premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, then shown at the Rome Film Festival in the Grand Public section and now from 1 February with Fandango in the cinema.
An ensemble film with grotesque characters struggling with their demons, sex, food, drugs, alcohol and religion, all fueled by hellish, hopeless heat, with orange photography. There's Valeria Golino, a loud and colorful porn star named Pupa (dressed and made up like Cicciolina); Then there's Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, a psychopathic mother who seems obsessed with religion like Pupa (who supposedly took her husband away from her), and Alba Rohrwacher, an alcoholic artist who loses custody of her son because of her ex Riccardo Scamarcio.
Then there is a priest (Danny Huston) who, together with his sister (Greta Scacchi), has to scatter the ashes of his perhaps not so beloved mother in a non-Catholic cemetery. Finally, there is Mila (Sofia Panizzi), Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's bulimia-suffering daughter and assistant to an elderly lady.
“These are the roles you're always waiting for, characters that make you step out of yourself and into other realities that you might be prejudiced against, but then you realize you feel closer to and they understands it better,” says Valeria Golino.
“This film begins with fear and was conceived during a very hot summer when I asked myself: What would happen if the world was always so hot, with constant slowdowns? It was then also written during the pandemic through long psychoanalytic sessions on Zoom with the screenwriters,” says Elkann instead.
And the director again: “I felt the need to tell this story. This summer reminded me of the Bible with its natural disasters: apocalyptic visions, cricket invasions, wild animals and punished sinners.”
Instead, Rohrwacher emphasizes: “I'm grateful to Ginevra, because in a film full of characters who shamelessly flaunt their pain, mine underexposes it, working on the interiority instead of screaming it out.”
The amused and clever Valeria Bruni Tedeschi says of her character Gianna: “I could easily identify with my character's fear because I am very anxious, obsessed and anxious. In short, I felt on the same level.”
“I played a character that really appeals to my generation,” explains Sofia Panizzi of Mila, “a girl who expresses her fear through food and then fears that it will show on her body. What she lacks is self-love and love for the people around her.”
Finally, there is no shortage of biographical references in “I Told You So,” whether direct or indirect.
The director reveals: “I grew up in a house where many priests came and above all there was a nice one who drank and ate, spiritually and in his own way also humanely.” The director finally admits that the title is a warning is facing a future climate catastrophe and Elkann says: “It’s very irritating to hear that, but I really like saying it.”
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