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VENICE 2016 Venice Days

Indivisible: Separating to grow

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- VENICE 2016: Two years on from Perez, Edoardo De Angelis returns to Venice with a story of harmony and separation, centring on two conjoined twins who discover they could be separated

Indivisible: Separating to grow
Angela and Maria Fontana in Indivisible

They walk in an embrace, they share clothes and feelings, and they’re always together because separation isn’t an option for them. Two conjoined twins are the protagonists of Indivisible [+see also:
trailer
interview: Edoardo de Angelis
film profile
]
, the new and highly anticipated film by Edoardo De Angelis as he returns to Venice, this time in the Venice Days section, two years on from his film Perez [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
being selected out of competition. The Neapolitan director only confirms that Neapolitan film is buzzing with talent and creativity with this original, innovative story about separation, growth and love, centering around a pair of sisters, Dasy e Viola (Angela and Marianna Fontana, who are twins but not conjoined twins), who, at the age of 18, discover that they could be separated.

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Their parents, however, don’t agree. We’re in Castel Volturno, where the two sisters are local stars and support the whole family by singing at weddings. They’re highly sought after precisely because they’re so different, and people also think they’re lucky, as if they were sacred creatures. Their father (Massimiliano Rossi), their manager and writer of their songs, and their mother (Antonia Truppo), a pothead with nothing to offer, have always hidden the possibility of separation from the two girls. And when a doctor (Peppe Servillo) they meet at a party insists on operating, the state of equilibrium between the two sisters and the entire family falls to pieces. Dasy is determined to go through with it. She wants to live a normal life, travel, dance, and make love; Viola is scared of separation, of being alone. Without her sister life just doesn’t make sense. But even arguing is complicated when you’re joined at the hip, and only a desperate act will resolve the matter.

Wavering between realism and something more visionary, between beauty and ugliness and religion and superstition, a film like Indivisible would not have been possible without a powerful pair of protagonists, and the Fontana sisters are a revelation: exceptionally expressive and natural, with faces like Madonna and beautiful voices (they previously appeared on Raiuno’s talent show Ti lascio una canzone), they bring these two inseparable sisters to life in a very credible way: they look at one another, embrace one another, let themselves be carried away by one another, laugh, cry, discover new worlds together and sometimes even exchange roles. An extreme story of harmony and separation, but one which moves all of us, because “we can all identify with the close bond between two individuals”, observes De Angelis “like two sweethearts, or a mother and her son, who desire yet fear separation”. 

Indivisible is a Tramp Limited and O’Groove production. The film will be distributed in Italy by Medusa (slated for release on 29 September), and international sales are being handled by True Colours.

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(Translated from Italian)

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