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Cristina Comencini • Director

The line between love and abuse

by 

Daughter of the great director Luigi, with eight films to her name, Cristina Comencini has now been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar with Don’t Tell [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
. She is the first female Italian director in competition since faraway 1976, that is, since Lina Wertmuller was the first woman ever to be nominated as director and screenwriter, for Seven Beauties .

Cineuropa: Yours was a difficult nomination, because it came after the controversies surrounding the exclusion of Saverio Costanzo’s Private [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
.

CC: We did it, against all expectations, and it was a surprise, because we ran a marketing campaign with few resources. But the credit belongs, above all, to the film. I saw people’s enthusiasm during the US screenings, but I simply couldn’t believe it.

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The film is based on one of your novels. How did the need to deal with a subject as difficult as incest arise?
I had read a short article in the newspaper, about two people who, after having experienced violence as children, had made lives for themselves, had become adults. This struck me because we usually tend to believe that violence precludes a future, an “everydayness”. This isn’t true. The subject then expanded until it reached that which is so dear to me: talking about the contradiction between nature and culture. What we have inside of us are shared impulses that we know can exceed certain limits. It’s a fine line between love and abuse. What is important is not to remove the comprehension of things, which does not mean absolving, but understanding, not being prey to them. We should not reject all that which seems excessively bad. Because if you face things, you will not cause harm.

Many films are adapted from novels, with varying results. What difficulties did you find in adapting a text you yourself created?
Film and literature speak different languages. The beauty of film is that it condenses many situations into a single moment and visualises events, bringing them all into the present. Francesca Marciano and Giulia Calenda helped me with the screenplay. Together with them, I tried to render the book’s depth, while working within the horizontal structure of film. I had to cut out a number of scenes, but I have no regrets, also because of the actors’ wonderful performances.

For the first time in one of your films, you speak of cinema, an environment you know very well. In what way did the world of cinema influence the writing of the novel and film?
For a long time, literature treated cinema like its silly little brother, whereas it was a pillar of our culture. It made us famous throughout the world, it allowed post-war Italy to enter into modernity, it perhaps could have changed the destines of our decline. No one understood that, not even those making the films. Cinema entered the imagination of each and every one of us. Cinema wanted to be in this novel, it would not allow itself to be shut out. In reality, my generation knocked down the anachronistic barriers between film and literature. The differences between the two forms of artistic expression are so obvious that they can now ask for mutual hospitality, they can communicate.

A subtle irony runs through the drama of the film...
I think that’s a family tradition. Life is an alternation between the comic and the tragic, I learned this from my father. Even in telling such a dramatic story, I find you have to break the tension with laughter or an ironic comment. I have a tragicomic vision of life, and I love to mix genres.

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