The Time It Takes [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : Francesca Comencini
fiche film], the latest feature film by Italian director Francesca Comencini  presented Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival, talks about her very strong relationship with her father, filmmaker Luigi Comencini, what he has passed on to her professionally, but also how, together, they’ve known how to overcome some very difficult moments.

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Cineuropa: In the film, on the set of Pinocchio, your father’s character says: “first life, then cinema”, a sentence that seems to sum up the film well, in my opinion. What can you say about this?
Francesca Comencini: It is so central that at the beginning, and throughout the entire process, that sentence was the title of the film. It’s about one of the fundamental teachings that the father figure passes on to his daughter, namely that cinema is undoubtedly part of his life, but at the same time that this must be fed by life itself, by the events of life. Although cinema is something very serious for the father, it is still necessary to remember that life is more important and he demonstrates this when his daughter’s problems lead him to putting aside his work in the name of life, of a vital emergency. It is a philosophy that also has repercussions on his way of making films, which is considered not only an art but also a job that requires a certain kind of humility. Cinema is seen as a kind of noble craftsmanship, and films as products that must have coherence but also interest the public. For the character of the father, this is a sentence that is at once a manifesto for life, and for filmmaking.

It is rare to see the father-daughter bond represented in cinema, and yet you do it and it is interesting that the other members of the family don’t appear in the film, that it is truly about a relationship between two people. Why this choice?
The idea of focusing exclusively on the father-daughter relationship was born spontaneously at the writing stage. It wasn’t really a choice, rather it was born from fragments of memories with my father in which, in the memory, only us two remained. I have no pretensions to be realistic, this is a film that wants to bring back to light personal moments and memories that I nevertheless hope to be universal. I wanted what there is between father and daughter to be a sort of abstract face-to-face.

Regarding autobiography, family and personal memories, how did you work with your two protagonists?
The work that Fabrizio Gifuni and Romana Maggiora Vergano have done is truly incredible, truly magical because it draws from the sphere of memory. We worked a lot on distancing ourselves from this personal core in order to avoid getting overwhelmed. Paying public but also private homage to my father involved walking through fire.

One of the segments that touched me the most in the film was the one related to drugs, to addiction, in a very specific time period and context. How did you manage to address this theme in such a profound yet not voyeuristic way?
Having reached my age, it was important to be able to talk about it freely, to be able, without trying to be presumptuous, to remove the stigma linked to drug addiction that I also felt myself. Because addiction is something you can stumble into, always. That said, there is still a thread, like a noose, that brings all the themes, and that of addiction in an even more overbearing way, back to the father-daughter relationship. At the same time, I hope that in my film, there is also something that, beyond drugs and addiction, can speak to the kids of today. The fact of not feeling good enough, of feeling completely lost, useless, as the protagonist of the film says, is something that I also see in today’s young people. The theme of failure evoked by the father, of being a generation of failures, of not feeling at the level of those who have preceded you, it’s not only something very present in our time, but also something alarming that we must deal with. There’s always a moment in life when you think you’re worth nothing, but then it passes if there is someone who loves you and makes you understand that you are important.