08/11/2007

Coming out on 300 screens tomorrow through Medusa Film is Come tu mi vuoi [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (“As You Want Me”), the feature debut by Volfango De Biasi, who previously made numerous shorts (including Senza uscita, part of the episodic film Esercizi di stile) and documentaries.

The €2.5m film, which was produced by production arm Medusa Film with Ideacinema (and in collaboration with Sky), owes much to the teenage titles that have exploded in Italy as of late – including its leads, Nicolas Vaporidis and Cristiana Capotondi, who starred in Night Before Exams [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Here, they’ve graduated from high school to university, which is where Riccardo and Giada meet. He’s rich, wanted by the prettiest girls and a terrible student; she’s poor, nerdy and, above all, ugly.

When his film is compared to Fausto Brizzi’s prototypical Exams, De Biasi seems anything but bothered. “[Brizzi’s] film is honest and well-written,” says the director, “and if it hadn’t been successful it would have been a lot harder to find money for Come tu mi vuoi. But my film isn’t a clone – it’s an all-around comedy that uses the genre and the star system to reach wide audiences. Italian cinema needs commercial films that aren’t vulgar and that don’t water down reality. I don’t believe in political correctness and despite the light tone I wanted to depict a cruel world that humiliates women in the name of a stereotype of beauty”.

For Capotondi – who from November 9 will also be in theatres with Roberto Faenza’s The Viceroys [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – becoming ugly wasn’t easy. “The transformation took several hours, with the prosthesis and make-up,” she says, “but this kind of role doesn’t come along often.”

The director is more than happy with her performance (“it highlights her entire expressive range”) and the rest of the cast, which features many young actresses (including Giulia Steigerwalt and Elisa Di Eusanio) as well as veteran Luigi Diberti as Riccardo’s father.

(Translated from Italian)