Giovanni Tortorici, a Protégé of Luca Guadagnino, on His Directorial Debut ‘Diciannove’

Halfway by means of the 81st Venice Movie Competition, Italian director Giovanni Tortorici ranks close to the entrance of the pack of the occasion’s most promising new director discoveries of 2024. The Palermo-born filmmaker, who spent a number of years as an assistant and apprentice below main Italian auteur Luca Guadagnino, premiered his first characteristic Diciannove Friday on the Lido. The movie is competing within the competition’s Horizons part, which focuses on promising work by first or second-time filmmakers.

A coming-of-age movie that eschews all of the acquainted tropes of the style, Diciannove is a brutally sincere portrait of what it feels wish to be 19 years outdated, filled with disparate want, intellectually formidable, and completely misplaced. The movie tells the story of teenaged Leonardo Gravina (first-time actor Manfredi Marini), a younger man who’s coming into himself whereas coming aside on the seams after he makes the sudden resolution to desert enterprise research in London for a literature diploma in Siena, the place he turns into more and more obsessive about obscure Nineteenth-century Italian authors. Wandering by means of the winding streets and mildewing flats of the medieval Tuscan metropolis, Leonardo turns into the quintessential teenage romantic, each bursting with youthful promise and corroding from adolescent alienation. 

In an admiring overview, The Hollywood Reporter critic Jordan Mintzer wrote, “The movie’s full abandonment of plot will flip away viewers on the lookout for some sort of tenet or form to Leonardo’s life, however that’s additionally what makes Diciannove really feel extra actual than many motion pictures supposedly about being younger right this moment. In some methods, Tortorici is carrying on a practice of Italian artwork movies, together with Fellini’s I Vitelloni and Pasolini’s Accattone, about disaffected youth who’re a part of a misplaced era, though Leonardo appears to belong to no different group however his personal.”

THR linked with Tortorici to debate the making of Diciannove and the way it resurrects his personal aching passage by means of younger manhood. 

How do you sum up Diciannove‘s premise and your cinematic strategy to it? 

It’s in regards to the expertise of being 19 years outdated. However throughout his trajectory by means of the movie, the protagonist and his character don’t develop an excessive amount of. Because the movie ends, he’s a lot the identical as he was when it started. So, it’s a little bit totally different from different coming-of-age tales. The concept got here up from my very own expertise. I used to be very curious to discover some issues that I had lived by means of, issues that weren’t tremendous impactful. I wished to attempt a type of narration that describes little issues each day — issues which might be a symptom of a method of being. 

This appealed to you as a result of it felt more true to life than the standard tropes of the coming-of-age style? 

Sure, I simply tried to be genuine to what I skilled — to be as near life as doable. I wasn’t making an attempt to comply with any narrative schemes in any respect.

You shot on movie fairly than digital, right? What are you able to share about your visible intentions? 

Sure, the film was shot in 35mm. My director of pictures, Massimiliano Kuveiller, and I did plenty of rehearsals and checks with lenses and I used to be very connected to 35mm. The visible language of the movie was one thing that was essential to me. I come from a background in literature. From the age of 17, I started finding out literature very intensely. At a sure level, I started to think about telling tales with cinema, however it was very tough firstly for me to think about switching from literature to a cinematic language. However at a sure level, there was like a change. I keep in mind I used to be watching Susperia by Dario Argento and there’s a scene close to the start when the character is on the airport. There’s a closeup of a sliding door — and from that second, I felt that I all of the sudden understood a little bit about cinematic language. It’s one thing a little bit easy, however I felt I understood. So in my movie, there are two moments with closeups of sliding doorways that are a little bit homage. 

Though he’s younger and delightful, the protagonist could be very alienated from his physique — there are little hints of physique horror peppered all through the movie. Is that simply a part of the character of adolescence for you? 

Yeah, at that age you will be very alienated from your individual physique, due to a basic neurosis, I believe. As a result of at that age, you’ve plenty of passions and it’s not straightforward to know them, so generally what occurs is you sublimate issues, otherwise you join your passions to unpredictable issues. This can be a very repressed character. He’s isolating himself and finding out literature fairly obsessively, so he’s alienated from his physique and his instincts at occasions. So you possibly can see that his passions have to get out ultimately. For instance, he’s on the lookout for sexual encounters, and in a single scene he makes use of the excuse of not having cash to purchase books to discover his sexual needs by posting adverts to [prostitute] himself on-line.

You talked about how the movie is essentially autobiographical. I believe it’s pure that viewers will marvel to what extent it’s autobiography versus fiction. For instance, the pre-modern literature he’s so obsessed with — had been these your mental obsessions and beliefs? 

Oh sure, it’s very a lot autobiographical. Clearly, it’s not possible to be 100% autobiographical, so I combined in a little bit fantasy. However in my youth, I cherished the literature and the books that he loves. One of many very well-known Italian writers I used to be obsessive about — which is within the movie — was Giacomo Leopardi, who says that once you go together with autobiography, you cease using rhetoric. So sure, I attempt to be very devoted to what I skilled. I lived within the Siena and the house that you just see within the film is the exact same house that I lived in over 9 years in the past — we shot in the identical room. The costume designer I work with, Maria Antonia Tortorici, she’s my sister. So she knew very effectively who I used to be in that interval and how much issues all of us wore. Collectively, we went to our mother and father’ home in Palermo and located our outdated garments and we used plenty of them to decorate the characters. Even the primary scene of the movie, the place the mom says to the boy, “Why are you sleeping in your sister’s room?” That scene was shot in my sister’s outdated room in my mother and father’ home in Palermo. 

So how do you are feeling now after having interrogated your previous so deeply — having type of exorcised it, or gotten all of it out artistically on display? 

I really feel completely satisfied. You realize, as time goes by you lose a few of your reminiscences. So I believe it was good for me to have made this and in a sure approach to have stopped time. It’s sort of Proust and Remembrance of Issues Previous. It makes me very completely satisfied to have represented the way it was. And never simply out of ego. Once I was a child I’d have preferred a lot to have been capable of watch a film or learn a ebook that represented the private expertise of somebody at that age with full sincerity. So I used to be additionally making an attempt to try this for different younger people who find themselves like I used to be. 

I used to be, in fact, very compelled by that closing dialog with the older, rich artwork collector character, who bluntly asks the protagonist the questions that the viewers has in all probability been asking themselves — primarily, why is that this younger man like this? 

For the primary hour and half-hour of the movie, you’re very near the character and his neuroses. And at a sure level, I believe you want a extra mature, psychoanalytical perspective ultimately. I don’t know, perhaps I used to be a little bit bit scared that after being so near the character, the viewers ultimately may have believed that the perspective of the movie is that he’s proper in his views and that he’s as sensible as he thinks he’s. Perhaps I had that unconscious concern, so I wanted a personality to return in a do some demolition of the protagonist’s character — somebody extra in contact with philosophy, psychoanalysis and life expertise. I believe that’s why I felt we would have liked this scene, however I’m undecided. I want to consider it extra myself. 

After a movie that’s so private and autobiographical, I can’t assist however marvel the place you may go subsequent together with your work. 

I’ve really written one other script. I used to be a little bit bit tempted to go in a extra fictional route, telling a narrative removed from my private expertise. However I believe each story you inform turns into private and finally ends up reflecting you. I keep in mind the traditional quote from Flaubert, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” So I began serious about once I was 16 and the way totally different I used to be from once I was 19. The social setting and the way in which I used to be residing was utterly totally different. However 19, my life was very intellectually pushed, however once I was 16 it was like a Larry Clark sort of story — medicine and women, and wild adolescence — in some methods enjoyable and in some elements horrible. So I used to be considering that I’d be unhappy if I misplaced these reminiscences, so I wrote a script about it. Once I confirmed this script to some producers and a few of my collaborators, they stated they had been amazed by how totally different it was from Diciannove though it’s additionally primarily based on my experiences. 

So fairly than venturing away out of your private expertise, you’re going deeper into it. 

(Laughs) Yeah, however sooner or later I’d additionally wish to discover different issues. I really love style motion pictures, thrillers, even kung fu motion pictures. So we are going to see.