"A film I envy": Paolo Sorrentino cheers Thomas Vinterberg at the Oscars for the best international film.
The affectionate endorsement is in a face to face via zoom hosted by Variety in which the director of the Great Beauty and the Dane of "Another Round" (to be released in theaters with Movies Inspired) met, remembering the magical night of 2014 when the Italian won by blowing the statuette to his colleague competing that year with "La Caccia".
Now Sorrentino would like that happiness to touch Vinterberg and the drama with two nominations and who has won dozens of awards, touching the heart with the story of a professor in existential crisis around the age of 50 who finds the joy of teaching, of relating to students. , with his wife, when together with his three friends, all teachers like him, he decides to experiment with the theory that life improves by maintaining a high and constant level of alcohol in the blood.
The chat between the two directors thus became a mutual confession on advancing age, work and alcohol.
"I'm 50 years old more or less like you. What was very moving for me about your film is that it deals with the difficulties that middle-aged people have ... to keep clear in their minds the ambitions we had when we were very young. ", Sorrentino told him.
"I surrounded my main character - played by Mads Mikkelsen, an actor of exceptional talent - with youth, with young people. At first they are like sharks: they smell his insecurity and want to kill him ... In the end he becomes part of them, and becomes weightless. This mirror between youth, weightlessness and age ... and being a man who exists alone, but does not really live ... these are surely the themes we have tried to deal with in this film. Alcohol creates the element of risk, but also the element of love and being together. "
Sorrentino: "I envy you because I always thought it was a good idea to make a film about that precise moment when you are not drunk, but a little drunk. A precise moment that lasts from 20 minutes to an hour: you are a little bit drunk. drunk and you believe that anything is possible. When I drink, and I drink every night, there is a precise moment when I believe that happiness is possible; that my friends are the best friends you can have; that my wife is exactly the perfect woman I want. It's something that lasts 20/30 minutes and I always thought it was a perfect movie. I was very happy to see your movie, because that's exactly what I think every night when I have a couple of glasses of wine . I thought it was impossible to make a film about this. "
Vinterberg adds: "When you lose your self-control and get creative. Problems disappear or get smaller and everyone is beautiful. And you see the love around you."
Then the question: "Paolo, do you drink when you write your screenplays?".
"Never" replies Sorrentino.
"When I write I listen to dance music. Very stupid music on the radio, music so stupid that it puts me in a situation very much like wine. Where I forget where I am ... It's like I'm not sober, but I'm not drunk.
When I write I listen the kind of music that brings me to the same situation in which I drink in the evening ... because I always wait for 7pm before drinking.
(HANDLE).