Rocco wasn't built in a day.
Supersex
,
the biopic series that Netflix dedicates to
Rocco Siffredi
, tells the long path traveled by the kid from Ortona until his consecration as a porn star. But there is no question of success story here, no debauchery of sex and bling-bling, to the regret, no doubt, of some.
More of a family drama and the contradictions of a tormented, raw man, forever scarred by childhood wounds, and trapped in the addiction that he will discover.
To discover
TV program this evening: our selection of the day
In this bright Italian province of the 70s, life could be a party.
But the modest and pious family of little Rocco Tano is experiencing trauma.
The older brother, disabled after being attacked by a band of gypsies, soon dies.
Rocco worships Tommaso, his half-brother as handsome as a god, who flaunts his cars and his conquest, Lucia, the object of all fantasies, but a young girl a little too "light" to be accepted by her parents.
It was also at this time that, literally - an amusing scene in the tone of a fable -
Supersex
fell into his hands , a serial novel whose hero would open up new horizons for him...
“The world wants to fuck us, we’re going to fuck the world”
The character of Rocco Siffredi
“
The world wants to fuck us, we're going to fuck the world
,” says Rocco (Alessandro Borghi, formidable and physically close to his “model”, same stature, same freckles, same way of wrinkling his nose when he smiles...) now Siffredi in homage to Alain Delon of
Borsalino
.
In the 80s, he moved in with Tommaso (Adriano Giannini) and Lucia (Jasmine Trinca) in Paris.
It's the time of the first castings, of failures, of the discovery of one's "superpower", then of successes, carried by a soundtrack which offers the best of the time -
Fade to Grey, I don't want to go home alone , Self Control…
Also time for the deepening of the bond between Rocco and Lucia, a very strong feeling and an attraction that they try to resist.
A true love triangle whose protagonists are all inextricably linked.
Rocco tries to get Lucia out of the grip of her brother who prostitutes her.
A Tommaso caught in a spiral of failures and self-destruction which reflects on his own and whose tumultuous relationship with Rocco, strong, ends up, despite everything, going in circles by playing too much the melodrama card.
“As a woman, I wanted to take the risk of telling the story of masculinity, from a man who has undoubtedly become an emblem of Western masculinity”
Francesca Maneri, creator of the series
A decidedly omnipresent family.
The series constantly brings Rocco back to his origins, his village which brought shame on him, his mother, whose attention he always sought, a mother forever devastated by the loss of her eldest child.
“
Every child has the power to become a man and this power lies in the eyes of another.
I have lived my whole life through the eyes of my mother
,” he declared when he was awarded a Hot d’Or at Cannes in 1993.
There is no secret here of Rocco's violence in his sexual relations with women.
Its brutality is revealed from the first images, behind the scenes of a show.
“
Yes, I’m an animal, I want to fuck everywhere, all the time
,” the character confesses without qualms.
“
We can't take power away from sex, otherwise it's nothing
,” he says again.
Clearly unacceptable behavior today.
Showing it, trying to analyze it without condemning at all costs, does this mean endorsing it?
“
I agreed to embark on this journey because, as a woman, I wanted to take the risk of telling the story of masculinity, from a man who
has undoubtedly become an emblem of Western masculinity,”
declares the creator of the series, Francesca Maneri.
Listening to the story of his life, I had the desire to portray not the porn industry but rather what is hidden behind it, and not the icon but how this icon was built and what price it had. had to pay a flesh and blood person to allow this transformation.
By recounting this process, I also hoped to make apparent the “sick” roots of the construction of masculinity
.
»
“My wife preferred that I cheat on her on set rather than in a slap”
Rocco Siffredi
Rocco Siffredi participated in the fiction - he even makes a winking appearance.
Man - looking for some form of redemption?
- has never been stingy with confidences to reveal his complex personality.
We would have liked the series to go further in time and explore his relationship, sketched here, with his wife, Rozsa Tassi, a former Miss Hungary married in 1993.
He spoke at length on the subject in a fascinating portrait in
M le magazine du Monde,
in 2016, during the cinema release of the documentary
Rocco
.
For her, he had decided to stop acting at the age of 40, and kept his promise for two years: “
Every afternoon, I went to see the whores.
I needed my sex fix.
I was unhappy.
I felt miserable, dirty, when I got home.
I spoke with Rozsa.
By mutual agreement, we decided that I was going to start acting again.
Our relationship was in danger.
She preferred that I cheat on her on a shoot rather than in a slap
,” he said then.
Perhaps the subject of a season 2?