10/03/2006

The six week shoot for Madre e Ossa, the fourth feature from Alessandro Capone, will begin at the end of May and will bring together French star Isabelle Huppert and her Italian counterpart, Laura Morante.

Filmed in French, the film follows the encounter between a woman who has attempted suicide for the third time (Huppert) and a psychiatrist (Morante) attempting in vain to expose the patient’s past, enclosed as she is in an inviolable silence. The mystery is revealed slowly, with the woman’s unhappiness marked by her heavy guilt over maternal responsibility. This exploration reveals a hasty marriage, an unwelcome pregnancy and the devastating taboos of a mother-daughter relationship, which mask the desire for death behind the appearance of obligatory love. Casting is underway for the part of the young girl.

Madre e Ossa is an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Française Danielle Girard, which was published in Italy in 1997 to public acclaim, but which has never been published in France.

Produced by Cristaldi Pictures, Madre e Ossa boasts a budget of €4.5m, including €1.8m in funding from the Italian Ministry of Culture. The French company Backup Films (see article), which specialises in international finance packaging, has been charged with finding co-producers in France, Benelux and Germany, with negotiations already well advanced for the latter two territories.

(Translated from French)