23/04/2024 - The Italian director chatted with us about his new movie, which sees him tackling thriller codes for the very first time and revolves around a man trying to run away from his weaknesses

Presented in the IFFR back in February and due for release in Italian cinemas on 24 April, courtesy of Vision Distribution, Trust [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Daniele Luchetti
film profile] is Daniele Luchetti’s third film to be based upon a book by Domenico Starnone, following on from La scuola and The Ties [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Daniele Luchetti
film profile]. We probed the filmmaker for a few more details on his latest feature film, which sees him tackling the thriller genre for the very first time.

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Cineuropa: Pietro Vella, with all his ambiguities, sometimes feels like a repugnant character. What made you want to bring him to the big screen?
Daniele Luchetti: If a character reflects the worst parts of yourself, or the parts which could reflect the worst assumptions about you, it helps you to grow. I asked myself whether there was a little of me in Vella, and the answer was, yes, there is. So what can I do to avoid behaving like this little guy who’s afraid of being mediocre? The audience should ask themselves this very same question. Sometime we talk about negative characters in order to feel better about ourselves, or to identify with them and subsequently improve ourselves.

Domenico Starnone didn’t help write the film this time round, but he did give you one pointer: “It’s important that there’s tension”.
Tension is a very straight-foward mechanism. It ensures that viewers remain active and attentive, with their eyes and ears open. I’ve read Domenico’s book a few times and always in one sitting. There’s always this kind of tension in writing like his – you get to the end of it without even realising. I wanted the film to be like this, so I put the audience in a state of alarm, through the fear the character feels. This tension places us in his head and we feel every possible break there might be in the steadiness of his life.

Could we describe it as a psychological thriller? This is the first time you’re tackling this genre.
I really like films with suspense, and I’ve made one in this instance using the things that I believe we should be afraid of. Children believe in monsters, I believe in the monstrousness of people, in the capacity people have to hurt others and, first and foremost in this case, in people’s capacity to do harm to themselves. This, for me, is the real enemy in the film. You don’t see it but it’s always hanging over the characters. In order to do this, I used the mechanisms of genre film in a very obvious way; what wasn’t easy was combining a genre film with a storyline which would traditionally have been used in films about relationships.

Mouldy lemons, crows, nosebleeds… These are just a few of the elements featuring in the film which create a sense of discomfort.
When I was shooting the film, the plan was to find an unpleasant idea for practically every scene, whether the look in someone’s eyes, a crow hovering over the characters or a mouldy lemon found in a fridge – ideas which I knew I have to come up with day after day. I wanted to retain that feeling of being confronted with something twisted and murky. Sometimes it’s just a sound, sometimes it’s an open window, sometimes it’s something within a relationship that’s disproportionate or violent.

The film’s original score, which is composed by Thom Yorke, also helps to create a sense of dissonance. How did you go about working together on this movie?
We’d already worked together on Codice Carla [+see also:
film review
film profile] - Thom had created new music for classical ballets. When I sent him the script for Trust, he was on tour and couldn’t help. But when he read it, four months later, he called me to say: “If you haven’t found a composer yet, I’ll do it”. I was just about to kick off shooting. So he sent me a piece he’d written while thinking about the film, a wonderful song which features in the closing credits. Then, when I’d finished filming, I showed him a few scenes, explaining the approach I used with my actors – basically always giving distorted instructions for each scene: I’d turn pleasant scenes into unpleasant ones, a more relaxed scene into a tense one. So he worked on the subtext, on what the scene concealed. Over time, we constructed a geography of sound which wrongfoots the audience.

(Translated from Italian)