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BIF&ST 2022

Review: Tapirulàn

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- Actress Claudia Gerini’s directorial debut is wholly set in one room and on a treadmill, with various characters conversing with the film’s protagonist via an app

Review: Tapirulàn
Claudia Gerini in Tapirulàn

You can say many things about Claudia Gerini, but you couldn’t ever accuse her of not wanting to challenge herself. Having proven herself to be a versatile actress in countless dramas and comedies over the past thirty-plus years (awarded a David di Donatello award in 2018 for her part in Love and Bullets [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marco and Antonio Manetti
film profile
]
), the popular performer has now taken her first steps behind the cameras, directing herself endlessly running on a treadmill while chatting with other characters via a display. Almost all of the action unfolds in just one room in Tapirulàn [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, a veritable athletic tour de force (her producers estimate that over the course of filming, the actress/director travelled several tens of kilometres), the end result of which was screened in a premiere – roundly applauded by the audience – within the 13th Bif&st - Bari International Film&Tv Festival’s International Panorama competition.

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The protagonist played by Gerini is called Emma. She’s a woman in her forties who lives alone in a spacious loft apartment boasting large windows which overlook a park, and who spends a great deal of time on her ultra-high-tech treadmill, because running makes her feel good and helps her to think. As such, combining business with pleasure, psychological therapist Emma works while exercising, answering videocalls from her many patients via a sophisticated digital screen linked up to her running machine. Her boss Marco (Fabio Morici) doesn’t wholly approve of Emma’s approach (“there’s a reason these sessions are called ‘sittings’”), but he leaves her to it, because she’s very popular with clients and gets excellent feedback.

Emma has reassuring and comforting words for everyone, whether it’s the girl who’s unable to accept her physical appearance, the father consumed by guilt for his daughter’s death, the female domestic abuse victim or the young gay man fighting for acceptance. She deals with panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorders and explosions of rage (the bumper cast gracing the various videocalls includes Stefano Pesce, Maurizio Lombardi, Corrado Fortuna, Daniela Virgilio, Lia Grieco, Marcello Mazzarella, Alessandro Bisegna and Niccolò Ferrero). Ever-punctual and highly prepared, Emma nonetheless falters when her little sister Chiara (Claudia Vismara), whom she hasn’t seen or heard from in 26 years, appears on screen: their father is nearing the end of his life and Emma is the only one who can do anything. But in this instance, our usually empathic protagonist flat-out refuses to help.

What is Emma hiding behind her reassuring smile, her running obsession and her refusal to leave her home? Between changes in gym outfits and pace, short stretching or mineral breaks, and various sexual distractions, the ghosts of her past begin to resurface and torment her. As Emma tells her patients, “Facing up to what’s blocking us is the only way to get our lives back on track”, and this is the very thing which she herself must do, because despite her constant movement, our protagonist isn’t advancing an inch, trapped in the bubble of her loft apartment, surrounded by half-emptied boxes and walls yet to be painted, and cloistered behind huge windows through which life can be seen going by. It’s a highly respectable acting and directorial effort offered up by Gerini, not least on account of the film’s varied shots and a screenplay (written alongside Antonio Baiocco and Fabio Morici) which stands up well to the challenge of a single set movie, despite a few forced moments linked to product placement.

Tapirulàn is produced by Milano Talent Factory in association with Attitude and Big Tree Movie Entertainment, and in collaboration with RAI Cinema and Sky Cinema. Also set to grace the Montecarlo Film Festival in a special screening at the end of April, the film will be released in Italian cinemas on 5 May.

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(Translated from Italian)

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