12/01/2016 - Olga Kurylenko and Jeremy Irons play an astrophysics student and her professor, who are madly in love, in a long distance relationship built on text messages, emails and video calls

Jeremy Irons and Olga Kurylenko in a scene from The Correspondence

“The idea is a really old one, I had it in a drawer somewhere. Twenty years ago it was a sci-fi brainchild, but modern technology makes it realistic and tangible”. A love story that breaks the boundaries of space and time, which like a star, shines even when it is no more, is at the centre of Giuseppe Tornatore’s new film The Correspondence [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which hits Italian theatres on Thursday.

Olga Kurylenko and Jeremy Irons play Amy and Ed, an astrophysics student and her brilliant professor. In the opening scene, we see them passionately embraced, smitten, in love and inseparable: the first and last point in the film at which we see them together. Their long distance relationship is kept alive with text messages, emails and video calls, in a frenzied whirlwind of phones ringing and notifications. One day Ed mysteriously disappears, but his affectionate text messages continue to arrive. Why? What should Amy do? Should she reply or not? Thus begins her quest for a truth built on technology and magic.

“Man’s eternal dream is to extend their own existential journey”, commented Tornatore yesterday when he unveiled his film in Rome, “and it seems that technology can greatly help us out in this”. Like The Best Offer [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], his previous film, the Oscar-winning director’s new film is a love story imbued with mystery and absence, countered by a virtual presence that threatens to trap the protagonist: “At one point, Ed’s loving text messages become an irritating compulsion”, confirms the director, “after all, technological advances bring huge advantages, but you also lose something with them. It’s up to us to consider the pros and cons”. 

Set in Edinburgh and England (which was recreated in Alto Adige, where four weeks of filming took place), the film’s score is by Ennio Morricone, who has just won a Golden Globe for the score of The Hateful Eight: “We’ve been working together for over 25 years”, pointed out Tornatore, who’s putting together a documentary on the great composer, “I’ve followed Tarantino’s famous wooing of Ennio over the years. I’m happy for him, it fills me with drive to think that a man of 87 is still doing all these things”. 

Produced by Paco Cinematografica with Rai Cinema, over 400 copies of The Correspondence will be distributed by 01, some of which will be subtitled, from 14 January.

(Translated from Italian)