'The White Lotus' travels to Sicily to analyze the politics of sex in a second season inspired by Almodóvar's cinema

Walking through Sicily implies observing a complete catalog of

.

Those pots and decorative vases that are part of its landscape recall the jealous revenge of a woman from Palermo who, more than a thousand years ago, when the Arabs ruled the place, cut off her lover's head when she discovered that her home was waiting for her wife and children.

Legend has it that he buried her under a basil plant and watered it with her tears.

Converted into small monuments to spite, very present in the streets, shops and houses of the Italian island, they inspired the long-awaited second season of

, the great winner of the recent Emmy awards 2022, which premieres on October 31.

For David Bernad, executive producer of the black comedy, they promoted the new plots of the series.

“There is a strong and very particular culture of sex in Sicily, although we often associate it with the mafia.

Those heads symbolize a certain way of relating that men and women have.

His passion invited us to deconstruct the politics of sex this season”, he told at the beginning of April at the luxurious Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Taormina (Sicily).

This former 15th-century Dominican convent is where the HBO Max comedy team has set its story this time, taking advantage of the fact that the hotel closes in low season.

Drenched in European flavor, its creator Mike White appeals to Antonioni, Fellini and Almodóvar in the continuation of what was the revelation premiere of the television season of the pandemic.

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ruthless vacation at sea

The European influence of both – Bernad is of Hungarian origin and White spends long periods in Amsterdam – gave them enough distance to explore in the first installment concepts such as colonialism, privilege and the American tourist pattern in a plot set in Hawaii.

So placing the new batch of episodes in the Old Continent was a natural step for both of them.

Exactly one year ago, they began a two-week trip together through 14 cities in the sunniest regions, such as Italy and the south of France.

They visited Monaco, Saint-Tropez, Nice, Cannes, San Remo, Rome, Amalfi, Positano... As soon as they arrived in Sicily and learned about the thousand-year-old tale that accompanies their

they knew it was the place where they were going to set the series.

White settled in Taormina for months to write the scripts for this new story, which breaks the bubble of the

previous Hawaiian

to also explore Sicilian streets and

In the second installment of

we found two couples traveling together.

They are college friends visiting Italy with their wives.

One of them, rich all his life (Theo James) and full of confidence, has a passionate sex life with his partner (Meghann Fahy), fueled by secrets, jealousy and psychological games.

The other is a shy and quiet nouveau riche (Will Sharpe), locked in a dysfunctional and neurotic marriage with his wife (Aubrey Plaza).

Also arriving at the hotel are three members of an Italian-American family, father, son and grandfather (F. Murray Abraham, Michael Imperioli and Adam DiMarco).

They go there to return to their origins and apparently have different views on what it means to be a man.

'The White Lotus', set this time in Italy.

The first season hooked the viewer from the first moment showing a corpse and planting with it the seed of a mystery.

Something similar will happen at the beginning of this new story, because it gives a sinister touch to the comedy and because "it is already part of the series' DNA and announces to the audience that blood will flow between those characters they are meeting," argues his creator.

“I think this season is a bit more poignant at times, but also a bit brighter.

The characters in the story told in Hawaii, even the ones with a happy ending, ended with a certain amount of bitterness and sadness,” he continues.

With this project, White has become accustomed to telling uncomfortable and tension-filled stories (but also full of comedy), in paradisiacal settings: "I grew up in southern California,

a very sunny place that does not always host happy people.

I didn't have an unhappy childhood, but I was that kind of weird kid, outside the norm, who sometimes felt depressed under all that blanket of light, ”he recalls.

Queen Coolidge Returns

One of the main sources of tension between some of the protagonists will be the character played by Aubrey Plaza, an actress

that an image of a strange and uncomfortable comedian has been forged since she participated in the television

.

"I loved putting her in the midst of all these rich people and such a lovely setting," says White.

But in the Italian

the viewer will meet the favorite character of the first season, the helpless, lonely and deeply funny millionaire Tanya McQuoid, played by Jennifer Coolidge, crowned by the industry at the beginning of September with the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries.

White, a personal friend of the actress, takes advantage of how well he knows her personality to place her in difficult situations, wait for her reaction and record it on camera.

In this season, she exploits the particular physique and the natural comical vision of the American, comparing her, in a parody tone, with Monica Vitti from

(1960) and filming sequences on a Vespa around the Italian island.

"It's what I think Pedro Almodóvar would do with her in one of her comedies," he says about who he says is one of the great inspirations of this Italian entanglement.

Tanya's character has found love, something she longed for in the first chapters and for which she betrayed one of the characters.

But he will understand that, even achieving what he wants, full happiness will be elusive.

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