original title:
Viola di mare
directed by:
cast:
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
set design:
costume design:
music:
Gianna Nannini, Wil Malone
production:
Italian Dreams Factory, supported by Ministero della Cultura
distribution:
world sales:
country:
Italy
year:
2009
film run:
105’
format:
35mm - colour
release date:
16/10/2009
festivals & awards:
A house made of tuff on top of a cliff. An imaginary island. A long time ago. A scandal hidden among the wrinkles of the Landing of the Thousand’s great history in the nineteenth century’s Sicily. Angela, the main character , isn’t like the other girls of her same age. She runs, smokes and plays with boys. She fears nothing and nobody. Not even his grumpy and violent father, the powerful mines’ guardian. All her feelings are for the young Sara. Angela is too different from the other females to remain that way. Her life is completely marked by the struggle to survive the truth. Shut up inside a cave by her tyrannical father after she had refused to marry the man chosen for her, Angela will be rescued by a trick from her mother who succeeds in persuading the parish priest to change her daughter’s name and gender in the register office. It is only one letter, a mere, harmless letter. An “A” becomes “O” and the world goes upside down: the chains that had imprisoned an existence suddenly disappear, the walls of the jail inside which she, since her youth, had enormously suffered, crumble. Nothing has occurred. Nothing. Now it is Angela who is in charge of the isle. The authority in the tuff caves she has inherited from her father is the seal of an upsetting code of silence. Her body is a lie, her power is true. This is the only thing that really matters. The truth of a restless, dangerous, different young girl is erased and the falsehood of Angelo, male since his birth, becomes the only self-evident truth. Now it’s appearance, and only appearance, to impose the rules of the game. And Angela is such a strong person to be able to enhance that truth and to force everyone to believe it. The main cause of all events, till the last one, is the strength of this lie which runs parallel to an intense and scandalous love story.
From the novel "Minchia di Re" by Giacomo Pilati.