una vita in cambio (second feature)

see also

Trailer

original title:

una vita in cambio

directed by:

cast:

Toni Garrani, Elena Arvigo, Stefano Fresi, Maria Cristina Blu, Simone Mariani, Paolo Ricci, Diego Florio, Claudio Puglisi, Svetlana Kevral,

screenplay:

cinematography:

set design:

costume design:

music:

Muvi Gruvi Luca Nostro & Lucio Perotti

production:

Own Air, with the support of Regione Lazio

country:

Italy

year:

2017

film run:

75'

format:

colour

aspect ratio:

2.35:1

Tormented by guilt, a wealthy old man (Toni Garrani) is visited by a stranger (Stefano Fresi) with whom he begins a kind of chess game: an unconscious trick to reckon with the obsession that he has plunged since he got involved in the life of a young woman (Elena Arvigo).
After the death of her lover, left alone to fight against unemployment and job insecurity, the woman refuses any help from the old man: without any real human contact, his offerings become even more obsessive and his generosity maybe hides only the presumption of control her life.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES The film’s screenplay was inspired by a story by Bernard Malamud titled “Have mercy,” with an adaptation which, true to the theme, twists the plot starting from the setting of space and time. Faced with a history of guilt that explores the ambiguity of good and evil on the banality of contemporary, in which the main characters are so hostile to change and had to succumb inevitably, the film I wanted to make belongs to all effects the noir genre.
I interpreted the dry dialogue, the long silences of the script, with a mysterious and dark atmopshere and then with a realistic picture made of sometimes poorly lit environments, lights, shadows and contrasting colors, scenes and costumes, which tell a lot the internal conflicts of the characters. The light sources are scarce as in reality: there is a little need to dissolve the light and stay in the darkness.