original title:
Completeness denied
italian title:
La completezza negata
directed by:
cast:
Bruno Montefalcone, Maria Luisa Montefalcone
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
producer:
production:
country:
Italy
year:
2023
film run:
15'
format:
colour
aspect ratio:
16:9
status:
Ready (01/07/2023)
festivals & awards:
"Completeness denied" is the representation in evocative, allusive and poetic images, music and words of a state of mind of two parents devastated by the premature death of their daughter; but also of the human and existential incompleteness to which the tragedy is like a mirror.
This heartbreaking cry becomes an abstract allegorical expression which, referring to the idea of the finitude and limitation of Man, leads us to think of the mystery of the existential condition to which perfection has been denied.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES:
The film tells the feelings of a family and the premature death of a little girl due to an illness, describing the tragic and devastating impact on the parents' lives.
Through an editing that combines raw and sincere monologues with a flow of evocative and allusive images and music, the work represents in an experimental and abstract way both a tormented and inconsolable state of mind – in turn outlined by a variegated range of sensations, emotions and more essential and visceral thoughts of the relative protagonists; and the specular general image of human and existential incompleteness to which tragedy acts as a reflecting mirror. This expressive aspect, purely poetic, involves and excites. Furthermore, the film, in recording with sensitivity and depth the upset and anguished interiority of the characters, deals with philosophical, lofty and complex themes. Reasoning in a clear, precise and essential way on the fundamental existential and metaphysical questions that have always tormented the human mind, he offers the viewer more questions than answers, but also interesting food for thought.
Another of the main purely experimental characteristics that makes this short film particular and in its own way fascinating, lies in the ability to have given voice to self-conclusive, autonomous and apparently unrelated images and scenes, inserting them into an apparatus of connotative meanings thanks to an editing able to give them cohesion and interdependence.
This technical and stylistic choice adopted thus manages to unite the denotative and the connotative aspect, the narrative dimension and the thematic discourse in a single body, also referring to the pure expressive force of editing, understood as the quintessence of cinematographic language capable of giving dignity, value and expression to what is moving image.
The introspective, metaphysical and dreamlike journey of the film is in fact generated by the astonishing force of the exclusive role of film editing, used here for a purely poetic, symbolic and evocative function. Scenes, music and voices are edited according to a logic that favors metaphorical concatenations, assonances and internal harmonies, and which advances above all through associations of ideas designed to define, intellectually and emotionally, the various concepts on which one wanted to argue and reflect.
The aforementioned film with its allegorical and evocative load tries to stimulate the interpretative and intuitive vein of the viewer, in turn free with his intelligence, culture, sensitivity, to interpret to his own taste the various levels of metaphorical reading of the project.
In this sense, the intimate and private dimension of the drama experienced by the protagonists and depicted in images then becomes an allusive and expressive tool which, referring to the more universal dimension of the finitude and limitation of the human race, induces us to reflect on the mystery of the existential condition and on the fate of Man. A man who, between lack, fragility and imperfection, seems condemned not to free himself from the chains imposed by his own nature, and to never be able to escape from a sort of existential prison, in which he remains split between a real sense of impotence and a utopian desire to go beyond limits possessed…
The figure of the lost child brings an intense longing for love and nostalgia to the hearts of her parents, which cannot be appeased. The same feelings that every man unknowingly feels towards himself, his Creator, his existential condition: a deep thirst that he feels the need to appease, an void of interior to fill and an ardent desire for fullness that makes his existence restless… Like an organism that without important pieces will no longer function well, in the same way how can man improve himself and his own existence if he lacks something functional and important for this purpose? What is the sense of living a frustrating and suffering life for man? It is the outburst, the complaint of the creature towards its Creator. It is the question that he addresses to Nature or to a presumed God, anxious to receive consoling answers. But the only answer that seems to come is to continue living the torment of that question, letting yourself be shaped and molded by it.
In conclusion, "Completeness denied" is the substantial representation in images, music and words of a devastating cry, a painful estrangement from reality that seeks to give substance to a dream, to an all-human desire to get back what was dear but lost forever, and to want to live more and better (in) a new natural and existential condition, a reality that closely resembled an ideal Paradise on Earth… Even if, after all, the meaning (and soul) of the entire film project can be summed up in the question that has always tormented man: why was this much-loved ideal alternative dimension, which could make us more complete and better, was denied to us?