Luca Zingaretti passe à la réalisation avec La casa degli sguardi

par Vittoria Scarpa

21/09/2023 - Le populaire acteur italien a fait résonner le premier clap de son premier film derrière la caméra, tiré du récit autobiographique de Daniele Mencarelli

Luca Zingaretti passe à la réalisation avec La casa degli sguardi

L'acteur-réalisateur Luca Zingaretti (© Duccio Giordano)

Cet article est disponible en anglais.

Luca Zingaretti now features among the many actors who have stepped behind the cameras and transitioned to film direction. Monday 18 September saw the popular lead of the TV series Inspector Montalbano – and a big screen actor for authors such as Marco Tullio Giordana (Sanguepazzo [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film]), Mario Martone (We Believed [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Mario Martone
interview : Mario Martone
fiche film]), the Taviani brothers (Two Kidnappings), Daniele Luchetti (My Brother is an Only Child [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Daniele Luchetti
interview : Riccardo Tozzi
fiche film], Our Life [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
making of
fiche film]) and countless others – slam the first clapperboard on his directorial debut, entitled La casa degli sguardi.

Based on Daniele Mencarelli’s book of the same name (published by Mondadori in 2018 and subsequently winning the Volponi Prize, the Severino Cesari First Work Award and the John Fante First Work Award), Zingaretti’s filmmaking debut is produced by Angelo Barbagallo on behalf of BIBI Film, and Gabriella Buontempo and Massimo Martino for Clemart together with RAI Cinema and Stand By Me. For the record, Mencarelli is also the author of Everything Calls for Salvation (awarded the Young Strega Prize in 2020), on which the series of the same name, directed by Francesco Bruni for Netflix, is also based.

The screenplay for La casa degli sguardi was penned by the director in league with Gloria Malatesta (Children of the Night [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Andrea De Sica
fiche film]) and Stefano Rulli (of Suburra [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Stefano Sollima
fiche film], Dormant Beauty [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Marco Bellocchio
fiche film], Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film], to name but a few). It tells the story of 20-year-old Marco who has a great capacity for feeling, perceiving and empathising with the world’s pain. Marco writes poetry and uses drugs and alcohol to seek “oblivion”, a state of impenetrable unconsciousness, to protect him from the angst of existing and living. He drinks a lot; too much. He wants to escape his pain but, first and foremost, he’s looking to get away from himself. He has to anaesthetise himself in order to live, he says. He’s unable to be present unless his blood alcohol level is sky high, and he has ostracised himself from everyone around him - his friends and his partner - who are frightened by his desire to self-destruct. Even his father, a witness to his slow suicide, is incapable of managing so much suffering, but at least he tries to be there. His mother, meanwhile, has been missing for some years, leaving a gaping hole in his life. When he has to start a job in the Bambin Gesù cleaning cooperative, Marco is convinced that this experience, working in direct contact with sick children, will end up killing him.