original title:
Senza fine
directed by:
cast:
Ornella Vanoni, Elisa Fuksas, Paolo Fresu, Vinicio Capossela, Samuele Bersani
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
costume design:
Alessandro Lai, Lorenza Tanghetti
producer:
production:
distribution:
country:
Italy
year:
2021
film run:
80'
format:
colour
release date:
24/02/2022
festivals & awards:
A retro spa resort, a hotel out of the 1940s, a place that moves the present somewhere else, but where? This isn't the life of singer Ornella Vanoni; it's the revelation of her intimacy that is on show. Her energy, her personality, her music, and the caprices of a diva that stop the film crew more than once. Fuksas, the director, films it all, no holds barred even the arguments. Then there are the encounters with friends, musicians, and Paolo Fresu's trumpet that reverberates in the empty halls of the large hotel, with its daily routine of treatments and therapies: it is here that the story takes shape, past and future both, while Ornella is poised to become a fantastical creature, groomed for eternity.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
Me: What does making a film about you mean? She: a film about my life, real up to a point, then unreal. Like a fairy tale: it's wonderful to end life as a fairy tale. That's how this film came into being, with the search for the proper remove to tell the story of Ornella Vanoni: performer, actress, mother, daughter, woman. Her fragility, courage, good cheer, and music, lots of music. Objectivity and intimacy are intertwined: the film I have in mind and the one that then comes to me dialogue with each other, in a language that is clear and impossible in turn the result is a third film that encapsulates both. The remoteness of the legend is interrupted by the immediacy of the cellphone; confessions are confounding, within and without; on-camera and off-camera are the same story. Ornella leaves you no time to think; you can only act, only to discover that doing is a way of thinking. And a way of telling a fairy tale, but also the tale of a life.