19/08/2024 - The Italian director, also awarded a special Leopard at the Swiss festival, talks us through his fine new film, a family melodrama that spirals into magic realism

(© Locarno Film Festival)

Beyond speaking to Marco Tullio Giordana, the vaunted Italian director of The Life Apart [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marco Tullio Giordana
film profile], we also chatted briefly to the film’s cast; asking them about the project’s appeal, they simply responded “it was Marco.” Several decades into a colourful career, in which shines in particular his 2003 film The Best of Youth [+see also:
trailer
film profile], he was awarded a special Leopard award for the out of competition premiere of his newest work at the Locarno Film Festival.

A fluid melodrama that’s always one step ahead of the audience, The Life Apart is an adaptation of Mariapia Veladiano's novel, focusing on a troubled family in the North East of Italy, who are horrified when their new daughter Rebecca (played first by Sara Ciocca and then by professional pianist Beatrice Barison) is born with an enormous, highly noticeable red birthmark covering her face. More comes to light as her mother Maria’s depression compounds itself, before Rebecca grows into a gifted musician, mentored by her aunt Erminia (Sonia Bergamasco). 

Our conversation examined the film, before zooming out to the director's associations with Marco Bellocchio and Bernardo Bertolucci, and his admiration for Chantal Akerman. 

Cineuropa: How did the project come to you, and what was the particular draw of the original novel by Mariapia Veladiano, published in 2011? 
Marco Tullio Giordana: The project was initially for a film that Marco Bellocchio was supposed to direct. He had written the first draft of the screenplay with Gloria Malatesta, and he offered the film to me because he was no longer interested in directing it. And I loved the screenplay, and then I loved the novel, which I read afterwards. Although there are of course differences: the main one is the fact that in the novel, the look of the child monstrous. The stroke of genius by Bellocchio and Malatesta was in turning this ugliness into a birthmark, a big red mark, which is a shock for the others, for the mother, the father and the aunt, but not for the little girl. I thought it was a very interesting subject, because it has to do with our ability to accept otherness and people who are different from us; the idea of deformation, but also the difference in the look of the viewer's eye, which is very topical nowadays.

Given I’m not Italian or Catholic, I wondered if there was a special symbolic significance or religious association to the birthmark I was missing. And given your changing of the source material, it doesn’t affect her appearance as much as it might. But I understand her mother Maria's reaction. 
I wouldn't know if there is any religious symbolism connected to the red birthmark, because since the age of five, I’ve been an atheist and I told my parents never to bring me back to a mass or force me to walk into a church. So I'm not familiar with the liturgy of it at all. I respect it, but I wouldn't know. The only mass that I hear is in C minor, by Bach.

Gradually, we realise the film is expressionistic and underpinned by fantasy and magic realism – I’m thinking of the rock dwarves who come to life. Can you talk about how the film bridges fantasy and realism? 
I think it's just connected to the imagination of children, you know, that the fantasy that they have is so strong. They do see things that grown-ups don't see, like in the stone dwarves, who suddenly smile and somehow communicate to them. And this is strictly connected to my own experience as a child. I remember that I saw ghosts and they were not scaring me, quite the opposite! And I'm really sorry I'm no longer able to see them. It's primal.

The dedication to Chantal Akerman is intriguing: the relationship to her work came to my mind through its exploration of the bond between mother and daughter, and the trauma passed between them.
She was one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century, and possibly the 21st had she not taken her life, something which she did after the death of her mother, which is indeed an indication of the complex relationship she must have had with with her. And that is echoed in the film. You know, she expressed that in many of the later films she made and it's something that came to mind when I wrapped up on my own film. I hadn't thought about it before, but I have a deep, deep respect and esteem for this extraordinary filmmaker who was one of the first to deal with certain issues in filmmaking that have become quite common nowadays, and therefore tragically ordinary and almost trivial. And she was dividing opinion in her own time and was not, like nowadays, homogeneous. She was revolutionary.

Could you talk about your relationship with Bellocchio across your career, and what his original slant was on the material?
When I was 20 and I dreamt of becoming a filmmaker, the two filmmakers that I admired the most were Marco Bellocchio and Bernardo Bertolucci. And although I could not imagine that we'd become friends, I befriended both of them whilst still deeply admiring what they did. So when [Bellocchio] offered me the script, I felt very flattered by the act of faith that he was actually making, entrusting me with a former project of his. He even encouraged me to go very personal, and knew all too well that I was not making a copycat of his own themes and issues. He would probably have insisted more on the family’s Catholicism, and the neurotic bonds in their relationship, whilst I walked a more ambiguous line, in a way, because I have no resentment for the Catholic religion I rejected.