A hospital ward, a series of nameless characters, many thoughts that seem to be lost in the air and, on the horizon, the possibility of living perhaps differently. In the room with BIM distribution since 27 March, «Despite», the second work of the actor Valerio Mastandrea After the acclaimed “Ride”, and opening films of the Orizzonti section at the last Venice Film Festival, it cannot be enclosed in a genre formula. Not the classic medical drama, but a narrative on the wire of the metaphor that tells life, and does it in an unusual way, through reflection on the coma, limbic condition of momentary freezing of existence, strongly evocative of certain states of immobility suffered or unconsciously sought by the human being to defend himself from the impacts of living.
A suspended time that could also be comfortablefree from commitments and responsibilities, but of which the Roman director – yesterday in Messina with Cineforum Don Orione and Cinema Lux for a sold out meeting with the public – proposes a singular reading. A courageous test, not only for the basic theme, but also for the way of representation, with sober style and a subtle irony to make everything terribly serious.
The plot revolves around an unnamed man, played by Mastandrea himselfwho wanders inside and outside a hospital department, invisible to everyone, to doctors as to patients. It is a coma spirit that lives an alternative condition to true life, from which she does not want to go out, and who shares with other friends in her own state (Lino Musella, Laura Morante and Justin Korokvin).
A film that speaks of hope, despite the focus on a condition that could contain the end. “When you have little time, you have to live it that little time – the director told us – If you live a love story you have to do it in that time. The cavity is precisely this to take place between life and the wait, a better place to bring out emotions ».
Starting with the protagonist, who in that limbo will have to deal with an overwhelming and shocking feeling. The hospitalization in his own room as a woman victim of a road accident (the Argentine actress Dolores Fonzi) will in fact disappear every comfortable theory about lifeopposing the impatience to immobility, the will to change above everything; So live how to die or die. “It is basically a film about the strength of love – he continues – because speaking of love speaks of everything, you can touch all the arguments on which the human being questions himself continuously”.
“Despite” it is work full of spirituality, an adverb that becomes noun, like a mantra that the director has taken on by the poet Angelo Maria Ripellino: “With” despite “he referred to people capable of resisting the impacts of life keeping one with each other, demonstrating how important it is to be together. Nobody wants to leave alone, but nobody wants to live alone And loneliness is another theme that the film touches little by little ».
“Despite” can we also apply to our difficult time, marked by wars and violence among men?
«Making a film like this is also to talk about what we are made – concludes Mastandrea – because we are not only made of everything that strikes us violently. There is a need for hope and a lot of cultural work to do, a huge job ».
Written by Mastandrea with Enrico Audenino, “despite” it is an HT Film, Damocle and Tentrstorias production with Rai Cinema.