ITALY: DIRECTOR GUISEPPE PICCIONI TALKS ABOUT HIS LATEST FILM "LIGHT OF EYES" SELECTED FOR COMPETITION ON THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

Record ID: 392043

  • Title: ITALY: DIRECTOR GUISEPPE PICCIONI TALKS ABOUT HIS LATEST FILM "LIGHT OF EYES" SELECTED FOR COMPETITION ON THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
  • Date: 17th September 2001
  • Summary: LIDO, VENICE, ITALY (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Italian) DIRECTOR GIUSEPPE PICCIONI: "I love characters that are somewhat 'out of place', I love people who feel different from others, like they don't belong. But this difference that they feel is not extreme, or a physical defect, or an extreme desperation. It's the kind of desperation that you get with people who try
  • Embargoed: 2nd October 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LIDO, VENICE, ITALY
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAC5THF0GX24M2BDRPTPB7EOWUC
  • Story Text: "Luce dei miei Occhi" ('Light of my Eyes') was recently selected for competition at the Venice Film Festival and it not only won the hearts of the select audiences lucky enough to catch a screening in Venice but it also struck a chord with the jurors, scooping Best Actress and Best Actor awards for rising Italian stars Luigi Lo Cascio and Sandra Ceccarelli.
    Reuters caught up with the film's director Giuseppe Piccioni as well as the leading actors when they attended the festival.
    Italian director Giuseppe Piccioni whose previous film 'Condannato a Nozze' was selected for competition in Venice in 1993, states that in his new film, "Luce dei miei Occhi", his main characters have somehow been castaway. They are far from 'normal'.
    The lead characters Antonio (Luigi Lo Cascio) and Maria (Sandra Ceccarelli) Piccioni says, are constantly losing themselves and no matter what they do, they're never able to feel positive about themselves or move on to a more productive existence.
    "I love characters that are somewhat 'out of place', I love people who feel different from others, like they don't belong. But this difference that they feel is not extreme, or a physical defect, or an extreme desperation. It's the kind of desperation that you get with people who try to give some kind of reason to their lives," says Piccioni.
    The film written by Piccioni and Umberto Contarello tells the story of Antonio, a driver, whose alter ego is Morgan, a make-believe sci-fi hero. Antonio whiles away much of his time fantasizing in Morgan's world. Although he's a trustworthy person, a hard worker and a very sensitive kind soul, he's closed off from others, unable to communicate well with his contemporaries.
    Antonio falls in love with Maria, a mother who is not only struggling with debt after buying a frozen food shop but is also fending off her parents-in-law who are fighting to take custody of their grandchild. Antonio attempts to come to the rescue of Maria.
    "When you have characters that are nasty and inspired by evil, it's actually fairly easy for an actor to portray them because he can use language and movement to get that sense of evil across. But with this case, the case of Antonio, what Giuseppe (the director) asked me to do was to try and return to the character a sense of normality, almost like giving him no expression whatsoever," Lo Cascio remarks.
    But Ceccarelli didn't feel nearly as confident of her portrayal of Maria, and she admits she had serious reservations about being able to successfully play the role of a mother.
    "What I found most difficult about my role (Maria) was having a daughter. It was something I felt I couldn't really imagine because of my own personal history. I didn't grow up with my mother so I didn't have a role model for a mother or that of a daughter growing up with her mother for that matter.
    I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to play that role. But then Giuseppe calmed me down because he said to me ' look, Maria is not a normal, classic mother, she's completely abnormal'. So then I realized that I had to put the maximum of my own personal motherly instinct into the role - then all that which didn't quite correspond would give Maria that sense of being an abnormal mother."
    Piccioni says he chose Sandra Ceccarelli and Luigi Lo Cascio after seeing them audition for the roles, but that he'd always been curious about the two actors and that fortunately seeing them audition confirmed his impressions.
    His gamble paid off when the up and coming stars of the Italian movie scene Luigi Lo Cascio and Sandra Ceccarelli landed best actor and actress nods for their roles in Piccioni's melancholy drama "Light of My Eyes,", just one of several competition entries that sharply divided critics in Venice.
    --
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