04/04/2023 - We chatted with the director about his new film, presented at Bif&st 2023, which is a poetic exploration of a teenager’s discovery of cinema and sex in the 1970s

(© Bif&st)

In his new comedy entitled Le mie ragazze di carta [+see also:
trailer
interview: Luca Lucini
film profile], Luca Lucini (Three Steps Over Heaven, Love, Soccer and Other Catastrophes, Nemiche per la pelle [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) transports viewers back to the Veneto region of the late Seventies. Central to the film are the Bottacin family (mum Anna - Maya Sansa, dad Primo - Andrea Pennacchi and teenager Tiberio - Alvise Marascalchi), who leave the countryside and move to the city of Treviso, where they finally get to live in an apartment with a decent bathroom and to buy a TV set. The world is changing and cinemas start to show erotic films to avoid bankruptcy. We met with the director at the 14th Bif&st - Bari International Film&Tv Festival, where his movie was presented in a world premiere in the competitive ItaliaFilmFest/New Italian Cinema section.

Cineuropa: You say that this nineth fiction film of yours is your most heartfelt and personal movie. In what sense?
Luca Lucini: In some ways, I see it as a new beginning. It’s a film I’m really attached to because I wrote it with Mauro Spinelli, who passed away two years ago. It’s thanks to Mauro that I started to make films. More than twenty years ago I wrote my first short film, Il sorriso di Diana, which was well-received. After that, I didn’t get to work with him for a while. And then at long last, we got to write the story and screenplay for this film together, which won the Solinas Prize in 2007.

Why did it take all these years to make?
That’s a question I ask myself too, but in some respects I’m happy about it. Maybe it makes more sense to explore the cinema crisis of that time now, because we’re experiencing a similar crisis. And to open today’s youngsters’ eyes to how people discovered sex once upon a time; it’s completely different now, less poetic.

The film revolves around three teenagers, but all the characters leave their mark, even the secondary ones.
It wasn’t easy to find the right young actors for such well-written characters. Alvise is a professional, he took great care with his character. Christian Mancin, who plays his friend Giacomo, really got into the ‘80s: he loves anything that’s old, he listens to music from that era, he likes scooters from that time… We imagined Marika (Marta Guerrini) as heavenly. It was funny seeing them together; they worked really well. The remainder of the cast were exceptional too: I’d pictured Pennacchi in this role from the outset, Maya did an extraordinary job with her dialect. One of Mauro’s strengths was the fact that he never wrote one-dimensional characters, even minor parts ooze depth and humanity.

Years ago, I happened to be flicking through some old film dailies from the 1970s, and the number of cinemas which showed erotic films really was surprising. What memories do you have of those years?
The film shows exactly what I experienced first-hand. I lived opposite a cinema. It’s where I went to watch cartoons or films starring Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. At a certain point, I wasn’t allowed to go there anymore, but I didn’t understand why. My mother said the films weren’t suitable for me. Then, when I was a bit bigger, I snuck inside with a friend of mine through an emergency exit round the back, and I experienced a kind of short-circuit between a love for film and discovering sex. I could see enormous breasts on screen… it was poetic, in a certain sense. It was at that very moment that hardcore cinema was starting to become a global business; everyone was staying home to watch TV and if cinemas didn’t want to close, they had to get on board. One funny thing about the film has to be impossible love for a pornstar, explored in a romantic key.

The film is an emotional rollercoaster: there are tears and laughter. And there’s a certain nostalgia for those times when everything seemed gentler and more straightforward.
That’s thanks to Mauro’s sensitivity; it’s no coincidence that so many significant Italian screenwriters come from the Veneto region: there’s a level of cynicism which actually conceals a huge heart, which is perfect for telling cinematographic stories. We liked the idea of exploring this boy’s loss of innocence and linking it with the loss of innocence of an entire country which was undergoing change. Once you discover certain things, you can’t go back to those innocent times when you played with cars or soldiers, or read Tex Willer in the playground. The same goes for the country: the exodus from the countryside, the need to have so many things, TV… it all started an irreversible process of change. We wanted to explore something which won’t ever return, for better or for worse.

(Translated from Italian)