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Oracle of DelphiValeria Golino in Respiro: Grazia's Island (2002)
July 21st 2006 01:18
This film revolves around a family of fishermen on a small Sicilian island, Lampedusa, east of mainland Sicily in the present day, and as seen through the eyes of Pasquale, a highly sensitive teenager and Grazia, his mother, a young and whimsical woman, despised by the inhabitants of the island who are jealous of her beauty and her care-free ways. The majority of her fellow islanders think she is "over-the-top" and although he is embarrassed by her behaviour, Grazia’s son Pasquale does his best to buffer her against growing pressure by both the community and Grazia’s husband to have her hospitalised in Milan
In essence, Respiro (Grazia's Island) is a beautiful love and community story set in the deep Mediterranean south, where stifling traditions and individual impulses continue to clash, often leading to tragedy.
Director Emanuele Crialese found the subject of this film upon returning from the United States (where he had trained and made his first feature), as he was resting on the coast of Lampedusa, a small island set halfway between Sicilia and Tunisia. There, Crialese bought a boat and started to mingle with the local fishermen. "They don't talk to you if you're not one of them," he said. One day, those fishermen started to talk about the legend of the island, about a woman, who went on to become the main character of Respiro.
"The legend I was told," reveals Crialese, " was about a woman who was considered crazy by the community of the island. But nobody could really tell me what was crazy about her! The most common answer was, 'When she is sad, she is too sad; when she is happy, she is too happy.' It was immediately clear to me that they were talking about a regular woman with difficulty in controlling her emotions. According to the legend, at one point, the community asked this woman's family to send her to Milan, to be seen and cured by a doctor. She didn't want to go, the community pressed and pressed until, one day she disappeared into the sea. Eveybody thought she had killed herself, and the community changed completely their behaviour, started to think about the beauty of this woman and pray for her, call her. And she started to appear in their dreams. And one day, she reappeared from the sea. This is the main legend I was told. I decided to keep it, but made it less religious and explored what happened to her from the moment she disappeared to the moment she reappeared. And I found the character of the son who decided to 'kidnap' her and hide her in a cave."
For the character of this woman, Crialese's producer Domenico Procacci (three films in Cannes 2002, including Respiro) decided to go for Valeria Golino, an actress known for commercial films like Hot Shots! and Rain Man but who has also always abided by arthouse productions (Slaughter of the Cock, The Pear Tree) throughout her career. The actress brought all her sultry candour to a role that required a great amount of physicality, whether in seaside frolics depicting the character's natural but frowned-on sensuality or in fits of hysterics stemming from neurological disorder. The actress manages to impose her likeable presence in a role reminiscent of Beatrice Dalle's Betty Blue. Next to her, the children of the film often manage to overshadow the adults by their sheer grace and ebullience. But Crialese makes sure never to forget the emotional core of his story, how the pressures and contradictions of the adult world rub off on children, especially in a world where instincts and impulses are still greatly visceral and families still cohesive and bound by traditions.
"To me, the South represents especially a sense of a family" expressed Crialese. "The South is the place where the families are bigger and always together. It is a good thing, because you never feel alone, you feel that there is always somebody looking for and after you. But it can also be very dangerous, because it sometimes deprives a person of one's individual identity. It means that you always have to match the family's expectations. It sometimes doesn't help. Also the tight sense of family in the South sometimes makes you forget the sense of community in a larger way. In the south, MY family is the most important thing in the world. The other families, I don't know about! MY family is the one to protect. The limit of this is the sense of closeness, oppression."
Valeria Golino as Grazia
Adressing such complex issues in both a very sensitive and intelligent way, Crialese made a film that was in its very process an experience in community and acceptance of one another. " At the beginning, the community thought I was playing some sort of stupid, waste-of-time game " comments the director. " They didn't take the film very seriously. So the beginning was difficult. For instance, I had to take extras one by one in the island, because they didn't show up at the production meetings. It was difficult to make them understand that we were making something that also belonged to them. Once they understood that, the passion was unlimited and they were there all the time. And at the end of the film, we had this HUGE group of people that were just watching what was going on on the set and following the story! It was a human experience I will never forget, about my job as a film director with people who watch movies but know nothing about them. It was a great, precious learning experience for me… "
Highly recommended. Awarded the Critics Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
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