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#11 A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE...
07/09/2005
Mignogna's film is an atemporal tale about family which starts with a funeral and ends with a birth. Although it confronts a Buenos Aires-born girl (Antonella Costa) and her rural grand-father (Federico Luppi) and therefore deals with the way time and space divide, especially in a country where the capital is a very self-contained microcosm, it also builds bridges and shows that this division is all relative, as they all are.
Part of its elegance actually lies in the fact that it is neither a drama nor a comedy but a variation on a universal theme the complexity of which it maintains and perfectly renders: here, the mother-daughter motif is envisaged as a tripartite relationship in which men are also involved and secrets interfere, that is, in which one-to-one situations do not exist (as a matter of fact, the mother does not appear), for they are always mediated. In this respect, the film ventures into a territory often explored in literature (Hervé Bazin...) and psychoanalysis but seldom on the big screen.
However, the mediation at stake is not seen as something impossible to reconcile with. The core of the plot is precisely a maieutics which ends in acceptance. In the end, 'todo pasa' and goes with the wind...
Interview of Antonella Costa, lead actress
How do you interpret this film?
This film deals with family, secrets, and justice as something the characters need. One character yearns for the truth and the other wants to reveal it and be punished, but in the end, they both are in quest of their identity. This film is set in Argentina, but it has universal value.
You are present in almost every scene, and there are many close-ups on your face. How did you deal with facial expressions?
The problem was less being expressive than the contrary. On the paper, my character was much stronger and a bit more nasty, but I tampered that down. Federico is so adorable that there was no way I could be as tough with him as initially planned. This being said, we generally stuck with the script, for it is very beautiful, a real piece of literature in itself.
Bénédicte Prot
www.cineuropa.org
In the photogallery, pictures by Michele Lamanna
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Antonella Costa |
Antonella Costa |
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