original title:
Adavede
directed by:
cast:
Valeria Belardelli, Lorenzo Costa, Michela Hickocx
screenplay:
cinematography:
Girolamo Capuano
editing:
set design:
costume design:
music:
Dr. Peacock, Optimist Apocalypse
producer:
production:
country:
Italy
year:
2017
film run:
20'
format:
colour
status:
Ready (17/07/2017)
festivals & awards:
Everything is surrounded by livid blue.
The warm sun in summer's beginning appears
for the first time, to accompany the
awakening of a silent and immobile nature.
In a wide valley, between white rocks and
dark grass, naked bodies, wrecks, residues
and twisted sounds make the scenario
looking post apocalyptic, while it only is the
result of a rave from the night before.
In the woods nearby, Clara, a 24 years old girl
from the roman suburbs, her lip marked by
the scar of a piercing she doesn't have
anymore, aching and disenchanted,
with constantly swollen and sleepy eyes,
walks holding the phone in one hand, when
she encounters a deer. In the hope of
capturing that enchanting image, she points
the phone towards the animal, like a hunter
takes up his shotgun.
While trying to catch that image, the phone
turns off, leaving behind only a doubt and a
sweet memory.
A journey through a day starts now, from the
woods to the suburbs. The research of a phone
charger that will lead a girl to confront
different characters, remarking the memory of
an encounter, making it more unforgettable
than before. A research that goes on through a
corrupted memory.
All the work of a day, from the sunrise till
dark night. And over there, summer suburbs.
Dusty and unresponsive. As scorching lime.
DIRECTORS' NOTES:
Men's innate and constant research, spiritual
or not, is what distinguishes us from any other
form of life, and that is the main theme of the
film, which investigates, with “an outer
insight” , the aesthetic shape of reality,
leading us in suburbs where the trail of the
“primary” and “primitive” life of the
inhabitants is evident everywhere. A film
about the corruption of memory, related both
to Clara's encounter with the deer and to the
reconstruction of past events to find the
charger, left behind because of alcohol and
drugs.
The suburbs, their space, their people, their
history are one of the elected territories for the
existencial journey. The image of the city,
even if horrific and conflicting, preserves an
organic precision, building up the dreamlike
and personal dimension of the main character.
The architectural décor, motionless, standing
between the wrecked buildings of the hamlets,
the orange bricks of the public housing,
everything covered in graffiti, like abandoned
ruins of a lost and undefined antiquity. The
suburbs become an invisible city, an urban
ghost which emphasizes the urban and social
stratification which seems to lack any solid
element, instead everything is a game of
connection and signs, of contantly replayed
and relived languages. The city, a result of an
exact urban and historical process, turns into a
theatrical space where the drama of modernity
takes place.
In the film, what is peculiar is the visual
minimalism which leads on the narration,
through the simple appearance of things, the
world's surface and the abolition of
explicative dialogues. However, the piece
does not represent only an insight, but a study
of the insight and a critic to the view, coming
down to the negation of the probative
influence of the eye testimony and so
supporting the total ambiguity of what is
perceivable.