13/11/2006

With her second feature As a Shadow, Marina Spada can look back on what has been a sincere and conscientious career to date. She started out as an assistant director before working in advertising, television and documentaries, at the same time enrolling at the Milan Film School. After several video portraits and some shorts (including the multi-award winning L'astice), her debut feature Forza cani followed the restless wanderings of five characters in an alienating Milan.

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In As a Shadow, Spada rediscovers this huge city where two stories overlap: one is a collective tale of immigrants and invisible shadows in the city and the other is a more intimate portrait, about a woman called Claudia. As a typical member of consumer society (that is to say, a society where everything has already been consumed), her uneventful daily existence, lack of appetite for life and blasé attitude gradually upset the vitality of Ukranian Olga.

At the film’s world preview at Venice Days in September, just before the director headed to the Toronto Film Festival, Cineuropa interviewed her on a sunny balcony.

Cineuropa: Where did you get the idea for the film and Claudia’s character in particular?
Marina Spada: The film came about from an observation of reality and an observation of an observation of reality, in the sense where the invisibility that all of us feel every day results from looking at the world in a certain way.
I did not particularly think of other films. Claudia is a modern woman like many others I know – my intention to focus on her condition also explains why men are completely absent from the film.
What I am depicting here is normality. Thus, when Olga asks Claudia if she wants a family, Claudia answers "Of course, like anybody else" but she does not intend to do anything about it, she is just "waiting". At some point, I realised that this was in fact a crucial dialogue in the film.

Why did you choose to represent change by means of an Eastern girl?
Because my heart beats in the East. My generation has been fascinated either by America or by the search for an ideal that Eastern Europe represented during the Cold War. I like that Olga is an "alien", that she truly enjoys life, as can be seen in the way she dresses and carries herself – in complete contrast with Claudia's "invisibility".

The film certainly depicts a routine, but the subtle detail and the way the images are framed (something is always in the foreground through or behind which we can observe Claudia) at the same time give a strong impression of substance.
Much thought went into this. One thing it does is give the audience a sense of spying – isn’t there a saying "photography is a secret about a secret"? – by working it into the film in this way, reference is made back to Claudia’s own life. At the same time, it’s a way of placing importance on the visual. Meanwhile, characters are looking at the way things would be off screen, behind the audience, giving the audience the feeling of complete reality around them, off screen.

How did you direct the actresses to obtain these outstanding performances?
We cut and cut and cut again – which is more difficult to do than adding things.

What question have journalists have asked most so far?
How much the film cost! And I refuse to answer such a question: value has nothing to do with cost!