- In perhaps the most difficult year, 2022, the one in which the fate of the cinema, now in open struggle with streaming and pandemic, will really be played out, among the 92 Italian films overall, eleven authors with as many works between classicism and spleen take to the field . They range from Paolo Genovese to Luca Guadagnino, from Gabriele Salvatores to Michele Placido, from Paolo Virzi to Pupi Avati, from Paolo Taviani to Nanni Moretti, from Pietro Marcello to Mario Martone and Alice Rohrwacher.
Meanwhile, there is a whole drift of 'classics' such as THE RETURN OF CASANOVA by Gabriele Salvatores from the novel of the same name by Arthur Schnitzler. A leaden work with the story of a Casanova (Toni Servillo) now in advanced age and grappling with his latest young and impossible conquest.
The film, written by Salvatores himself with Umberto Contarello and Sara Mosetti, stars Sara Serraiocco, Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Natalino Balasso.
Always on the front of classicism there is DANTE biopic on the Divine Poet by Pupi Avati. On stage his tormented life, from solitary childhood to death in exile, seen through the journey of Giovanni Boccaccio to rehabilitate his memory.
Among the performers Sergio Castellitto, Alessandro Sperduti, Carlotta Gamba, Enrico Lo Verso and Alessandro Haber.
Still a classic and even I PROMESSI SPOSI for Pietro Marcello who freely engages with the homonymous work by Manzoni. For now, no news on location and cast.
Even LEONORA ADDIO, the first film by Paolo Taviani without his brother Vittorio, is inspired by a classic of literature, inspired by the homonymous novel by Luigi Pirandello in which the marriage between Rico Verri and Mommina, a woman no longer young, is told. In the cast Fabrizio Ferracane, Massimo Popolizio, Nathalie Rapti Gomez and Sinne Mutsaers.
Mario Martone, on the other hand, with NOSTALGIA carries on his refined research on Neapolitanism with the cinematic reading of the homonymous novel by Ermanno Rea.
The protagonist is Felice Lasco who returns to the Rione Sanità in Naples after forty-five years spent between the Middle East and Africa. After assisting his dying mother, instead of returning to Cairo where his partner awaits him, he remains in Naples, perhaps because he is awaiting the fateful meeting with Oreste Spasiano, a hardened criminal known as Malommo. In the cast, Pierfrancesco Favino, Tommaso Ragno, Francesco Di Leva and Aurora Quattrocchi THE SHADOW OF CARAVAGGIO by Michele Placido tells the genius of the Renaissance, played by Riccardo Scamarcio, with a completely modern interpretation. Who was the shadow painter? For Placido a cursed artist very similar to the current rock stars, a man however struggling with his women, his demons and above all his genius difficult to manage. In the cast, Louis Garrel, Isabelle Huppert,Lolita Chammah and Micaela Ramazzotti.
THE FIRST DAY OF MY LIFE by Paolo Genovese, based on his novel of the same name and with Toni Servillo, Valerio Mastandrea, Margherita Buy, Sara Serraiocco and Giorgio Tirabassi, tells of the ability to leave again when everything seems to collapse. On stage the stories of Emily, a former Olympic gymnast; Aretha, a policewoman with a strong character and a troubled past; Napoleon, a successful New York professional, and Daniel, a small advertising star.
The four meet a mysterious character who gives them seven days to find out what the world would be like without them.
FIND ME by Luca Guadagnino is the sequel to Call me by your name (Oscar for best screenplay). Starring again Elio and Oliver, this time traveling to the United States in the Nineties. In the cast, Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar and Esther Garrel.
In DROUGHT by Paolo Virzì all the characters are looking for redemption in a world now in disarray and without rules (a bit like today). We are in a Rome where it hasn't rained for three years, which changes rules and habits. In the city that is dying of thirst and prohibitions, a chorus of characters moves, young and old, marginalized and successful, victims and profiteers. In the cast Monica Bellucci, Emanuela Fanelli, Elena Lietti, Vinicio Marchioni, Valerio Mastandrea. Little or nothing is known about IL SOL DELL'AVVENIR, the new film by Nanni Moretti, except that the director finished the first draft of the screenplay together with Valia Santella, Federica Pontremoli and Francesca Marciano.
Finally, with THERE WILL BE ONCE, Alice Rohrwacher makes her directorial debut in a series written by the director herself together with Marco Pettenello.
The story follows the adventures of a family of storytellers who travel around Italy in the late 1950s.
And this in the squares, on farms, on the edges of growing cities and on the streets of a country still at the dawn of the economic boom.
(HANDLE).
