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ROME FILM FESTIVAL Out of Comp / IT-ES

I, Don Giovanni: A rake’s progress

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One of Spain’s most famous and prolific directors, Carlos Saura, fittingly presented his latest film, I, Don Giovanni [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
in Italy, at the Rome Film Festival. The 50/50 Italian/Spanish co-production about the Italian priest-turned-librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte is in Italian and was also partially shot in Italy (Venice and Rome, the latter substituting for Vienna).

Something of a specialist in films with a musical subject (from Carmen to Fados [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), Saura’s latest imagines how the lives of Da Ponte, a Venetian libertine and student of Giacomo Casanova, and composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart influenced the creation of what is arguably their most famous work, the dark opera Don Giovanni. Though the music is of course a treat, there are many other pleasures to be had from a film that remains light despite the dark subject of the opera that inspired it.

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Saura uses a very theatrical approach, with wafer-thin painted backdrops for both the scenes of Don Giovanni as well as the scenes from the lives of its creators, and highlighting the exquisite costumes, wigs and use of light (courtesy of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro), thus blurring the line between what happens on-stage and off. The very effective technique also pushes his own invented origins story into the realm of make-believe entertainment.

Upcoming Italian actor Lorenzo Balducci is impressive as Da Ponte, the two-faced libertine perhaps wanting to mend his ways, while Lino Guanciale reinvents the punk-take on Mozart from Tom Hulce in Milos Forman’s less fanciful biopic Amadeus, even if his character is not as well developed as Da Ponte’s.

Veteran actor Ennio Fantastichini clearly relishes his role as Italian-born Austrian court composer Salieri, and Austrian actor Tobias Moretti, in a nifty piece of casting against type, makes for a credible Casanova.

Lucky Red distributes the film in Italy. Roissy Films handles international sales.

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