A personal and intimate diary, between true and transfigured memories, with a focus on the father-daughter relationship in “Il tempo che ci vuole” by Francesca Comencini, presented yesterday out of competition at the Film Festival. Produced by Marco Bellocchio and Simone Gattoni with Kavac Film, Les Films du Worso and IBC Movie and the collaboration of One Art and Rai Cinema.
The new work of the Roman director narrates that beautiful tale that was the relationship with her father Luigi, ever since, still a child, on the set of “The Adventures of Pinocchio” (1972), she understood how much life there was in the creation of that magic on the screen mediated by imagination. A special relationship, in which time and the tale are two great coordinates within which memories take shape, with a shared passion as a way of being in the world.
The idea for the film, which had been present in the director’s soul for a long time, found its definitive impulse during the lockdown: “It was probably a film that had always been inside me – she said in a press conference – but it took time both to feel mature enough from a directorial point of view, and to rework many things on a personal level, in a free and serene way. It also takes time to say thank you. Time is a notion”. “While we were in a pandemic, locked in our homes, with the fear that cinema could be lost, I felt a strong need to write down these memories that had accompanied me all my life” she continued.
The trust and approval of Marco Bellocchio, her teacher and now the film’s producer, is the definitive pass. For a work in which you have to talk about yourself and your father, the choice of actors is fundamental but also complex: “The aim was not to look for a resemblance. Even if the film draws on memories that are true for me, memory transfigures everything, highlighting some things and overshadowing others, the memories are true and at the same time dreamy. I didn’t rely on the resemblances, because there was a passage in which these characters were the father and the daughter, only that”.
The study of Luigi Comencini by his interpreter Fabrizio Gifuni is complex due to the little material on the great director, shy and far from any self-celebration, until he comes across one of his masterpieces: «If you want to have a better idea of the person you have to watch the investigation “I bambini e noi” (1970), an unsurpassed Rai documentary work. There is Luigi, in the field, with his special quality of pure and free listening; he went to interview children of every social class: from the suburbs, upper middle class, from the North, from the South, without any preconceived ideas. He had the ability to listen and empathize with children because he put himself at their level. That was my immersion».
Great responsibility for Romana Maggiora Vergano, who plays Francesca Comencini as a girl (as a child she was the debutant Anna Mangiocavallo). “After an initial moment of great happiness and feeling privileged and proud of having been chosen, came the fear of having to enter a job in which the person who was watching and directing me was the same person I was going to play – she said – This embarrassing situation fell when, reading the script several times, I realized that this story has a universal scope; so much so that in the script it is not written Luigi and Francesca, but father and daughter. I discussed this with them and we entered into a shared and wonderful journey”.
“Everything is inspired by the idea of the fairy tale – added Comencini – This little girl is at the age where she believes in the fairy tale and sees it being made before her eyes with “Pinocchio”. She thus understands the extraordinary power of imagination, which is also one of the keys to salvation. The father says at the end: “I understood that with imagination I could escape”».
The cast also includes Luca Donini, Gianfranco Gallo and – in the role of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia who played the Cat and the Fox in the director’s Pinocchio – Luca Massaro from Messina and Giuseppe Lo Piccolo from Palermo. “Il tempo che ci vuole” will be in theaters from September 26 with 01 Distribution.