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VENICE 2007 Venice Days

Maira’s fluid Waltz

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Shot in what director Salvatore Maira called a “flow of images, because the term ‘single sequence’ has something ugly about it,” Waltz (Valzer [+see also:
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) is an impressive technical feat that follows a dramatic hour and a half in the lives of several workers and guests at a luxurious Turin hotel – and even more remarkably also includes several flashback sequences.

Upon being released from an Argentinean prison, a father (Maurizio Micheli) comes to search for his daughter Lucia (Marina Rocca) only to discover that for ten years it was her friend and co-worker Assunta (Valerio Solinaro) who had been writing to him and that Lucia disappeared years ago. Meanwhile, on the hotel’s upper floors, wealthy football magnates ruthlessly plan the fates of club owners, players and championships – a year before the “Calciopoli” scandal broke out in Italy.

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These personal, social and political intrigues all intersect to offer a not very flattering portrait of contemporary Italy through identities that are exchanged, sold and manipulated with frightening ease under the noses of a society rendered increasingly more numb by television. However, Maira says, “This is not a film against football but against the most hateful form of oppression ever invented by man: the silent, invisible suppression of creativity and expression by the media.”

The director says he had a single sequence in mind from the onset, “because the film was musical from the start, and in creating a continuous flow I forced the characters to follow the rhythm of the camera, which allowed them to set into motion the backdrop rather than the other way around, where the story and actors are determined by regulating factors of time and space, such as editing.”

Unfortunately, the same kind of attention paid to the technical aspects of the film are lacking in its didactic dialogue and overly contained acting, both of which left audiences cold.

Produced by Home Production and set to be distributed in Italy by Scalpel, Waltz was prepared and shot in 21 days on a €800,000 budget.

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