20/02/2008

Six years following his surprising debut Pater familias [+see also:
interview: Francesco Patierno
film profile] – a small masterpiece of raw realism – Francesco Patierno is back, after having passed on some very interesting projects (one film on Neo-Fascist terrorists Mambro and Fioravanti and another based on Giuseppe Ferrandino’s novel "Pericle il nero", which New York director Abel Ferrara is working on now).

Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile] (the idiomatic equivalent to “the early bird catches the worm”), which Medusa is releasing on 200 screens on February 29, could not be any further from his first film, except for one subject that seems to obsess the young filmmaker and which unites the two titles: family and father-son relationships.

The main character in Pater familias was a young murderer who upon being released from prison returns to the violent Naples in which he grew up, to visit his dying father. Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca centres instead on a young radio DJ (Italy’s newest star Elio Germano, see interview) who becomes addicted to playing the horses and gambling, and ends up owing exorbitant amounts of money to numerous loan sharks.

The film is based on the book Il giocatore (“The Gambler”) by DJ Marco Baldini, part of a famous duo with hugely popular radio and TV personality Fiorello, and the decision to leave the real names of the story’s characters seems almost like a clever marketing choice by producers Marco Poccioni and Marco Valsania of Rodeo Drive (with whom Patierno has signed a three-picture deal).

"Actually, we were very uncertain about using real names,” they state. “We discussed it for a long time and decided to respect the real-life fact but gave ourselves great freedom with respect to the book".

"I was fascinated by the character’s coldness and duplicity", explains Patierno, who used as a starting point Elémire Zolla’s essay "Pinocchio e gli archetipi", to depict a compulsive liar without over-intellectualising and with a light comedic touch.

The cast includes Laura Chiatti and an unsurpassable Umberto Orsini in the role of a loan shark.

(Translated from Italian)