original title:
Canone inverso
directed by:
cast:
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
set design:
costume design:
music:
producer:
production:
distribution:
world sales:
country:
Italy
year:
2000
film run:
130'
format:
colour
release date:
11/02/2000
festivals & awards:
Who's that violinist who emerges from the shadows of a magical night in Prague and meets a young woman, Costanza, who has "the memory of the world in her eyes"?
Costanza has already heard the music he is playing for her in a smoky bar, an "inverted canon": it can be played backwards, it can also take people back to their past.
On the Moldava shore, during a night in August, 1968 - historical year for Tchekoslovakia and for the entire world - the violinist Jeno Varga tells Costanza his story.
In his childhood, he used to play the violin - without even knowing music - to try and console the pigs that were about to be slaughtered. Her mother would look at him, surprised at his talent and think about the man she'd once loved: a man who had left her alone with that "inverted canon", that violin, a child, and nothing more.
Jeno tells Costanza of the "Collegium Musicum" which he had the privilege to enter thanks to a scholarship he won. There he would meet and become best friend with David Blau - and at the end they would both discover they were more than friends to each other.
Finally, Jeno tells of that last concert in Prague, during which Jeno, David and Sophie were destined to meet one more time and then get separated. Their fate was marked by a passion that could go beyond any barriers and any sort of sacrifice, even death.
Jeno's story is finished. Costanza realizes the music was not just a mere, vague memory: it represents her own identity which was unknown to her up to that very moment.
From the novel by Paolo Maurensig