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CANNES 2020 Marché du Film

True Colours wagers on D.N.A. by Lillo & Greg

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- The comedy revolving around a personality switch is one of the titles which Italian international sales agency will be staking its bets on at the Online Marché du Film

True Colours wagers on D.N.A. by Lillo & Greg
D.N.A. by Lillo & Greg

D.N.A. Decisamente Non Adatti [+see also:
trailer
film profile
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, the first film directed by Lillo & Greg, which debuted on 30 April during the Coronavirus lockdown on Sky Primafila, Chili, Infinity, Rakuten Tv, CG Digital and TIMVISION, is one of the key comedies which the Italian international sales agency True Colours will be focusing on at the Cannes Film Festival’s Online Marché du Film, set to unspool between 22 and 26 June.

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Produced by Lucky Red and Vision Distribution with the collaboration of Sky and Amazon Prime Video, and also distributed by Vision Distribution, the film is written by Edoardo Falcone, a prolific, heavy-weight director and screenwriter specialising in the comedy genre, alongside Greg (Claudio Gregori) and Lillo (Lillo Petrolo) themselves. The duo are flanked in the film by Anna Foglietta (Perfect Strangers [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
), whose role has seen her join the quintet of Comedy Actresses now in the running for a Silver Ribbon, whose corresponding awards ceremony is set to unfold on 6 July under the aegis of the National Syndicate of Italian Film Journalists. Appearing in the cast alongside the eclectic Anna Foglietta, who plays three different characters in the film, are Max Paiella and Marco Marzocca, as well as young actors Alessio di Domenicantonio and Federico Jahier who play Nando (Lillo) and Ezechiele (Greg), respectively, as children.

The two are former primary school friends and wholly different kettles of fish. Nando and Ezechiele meet again as adults and decide to swap genetic codes in an attempt to improve their lives. Between clumsy scientists and DNA hack-jobs with undesirable side-effects, the duo turn out to be “Decisamente Non Adatti” (Wholly Unsuited) to their new lives.

The nod to the Jekyll and Hyde parody The Nutty Professor, directed by Jerry Lewis in 1963 and repeated by Eddie Murphy in 1996, is pretty clear. Greg admits he’d been thinking for some time about revisiting Robert Louis Stevenson’s masterpiece where a brilliant professor of genetics - a nerd and eternal target of jokes and harassment - and a tough guy from the projects caught up in petty crime come together in a bizarre experiment to switch personalities.

Having started out as comic book authors before moving into music with a zany rock band and finally finding their feet in the world of radio and TV, the duo’s surreal and highly original brand of comedy is made up of cutting, quick-fire gags, often based on plays on words and deprivations of meaning, but nonetheless able to describe the contemporary world in hilarious fashion. In Lillo & Greg’s eccentric universe, we can pick out the vices and virtues of Italian society - the male-female relationship, the obsession with sex, ambition and a thirst for the limelight - in this ferocious observation of human beings in all their petty, mean-spirited ways.

In terms of their moving behind the camera, they explain: “It was right and vital for us so as to be able to give our first film the attention to detail that we required. We know that there are specific registers and timings in comedy to help get a joke across, but we also know that masters such as Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks or Woody Allen succeeded in this field. We wanted our creature to be an entertaining story, but also genuinely pleasant and agreeable to watch, with evocative photography comprising strong contrasts, frames which are never banal but risky, vivid. We used all the means we had at our disposal in production: Steadicams, drones, cherry pickers, dollies, but only in line with the artistic requirements; we consulted the afore-mentioned masters, as well as Kubrick, Almodovar, Abrahams, and Zucker and Zucker, and we went for it with all the euphoria and daring that our first work shook loose in us”.

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(Translated from Italian)

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