09/02/2004 - Interview with the young Italian director whose follow up to The Embalmer, is yet another disturbing story of a couple, called Primo amore

After Turin, Venice and Cannes, Matteo Garrone is trying his hadn at the Berlin competition, with his fifth feature length film, called Primo amore. It’s a chilling tale of the intimate workings of a very strange couple: a man makes his girlfriend adhere to an increasingly restrictive diet, trying to achieve his vision of an ideal body which brings her to the brink of death. It was filmed in Vicenza and is inspired by an actual news story, where a man went hunting for anorexic women who ended up killing his ex girlfriend. This is the only Italian film competing for the Golden Bear at the 54th edition of the Berlinale. The stars are the writer Vitaliano Trevisan and the young theatrical promise, Michela Cescon. It is produced by Fandango and Medusa, and will be released in Italian cinemas on February 13. We interviewed the director.

Did you have any hesitations in choosing the German festival?
I was already thinking about Berlin when I was working on the editing, I don’t know why but it seemed like the right place to launch the film. I didn’t double cross Cannes. In fact they even phioned me to ask for a screening of the film, but I’d already said yes to Kosslick.

Why did you choose to set the story in Vicenza?
Vicenza, along with Arezzo, is the city of the goldsmiths. And the craft of the goldsmith seemed to struck me as being visually interesting. The jewellery designed by Vittorio’s character become increasingly subtle and fine, like the girl’s body.

In reality, you asked Michela Cescon to go on a diet that was virtually as strict and frightening as the one in the film, which also had quite a few psychological consequences for her.
On the one hand I identified with Vittorio: I could immediately spot how much Michela weighed, she didn’t seem to be getting thin enough; but I also tried to understand her psychological point of view. Halfway through the film we had a big row, but from then on in she made a big step forward as an actress, she even changed the look in her eyes. And I believe that was the thing that saved the film.

The Embalmer, which brought you to the attention of the wider public and won you many prizes, was also a story of manipulation, and it also had a craftsman as one of the main characters.
Undoubtedly there is also another element that unites the two films, a sort of alchemy in both of them: the search for the beautiful that both characters have: Peppino gives life to dead animals, Vittorio gives life to metal. Mind you, even though there are some similarities between the two films, I only see the differences between them.

(Translated from Italian)