Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci (The Dreamers, Stealing Beauty) talks about going back to work 10 years after his confinement to a wheelchair, the process of casting two unknown actors in the lead roles, and behind-the-scenes details from the production of his new film ME AND YOU: When my forced immobility became my normality, I thought that my filmmaking days were over. The idea of not doing any more films meant closing one chapter and opening another one, but I didn’t know what. It was a struggle for me to swallow the fact that I needed a wheelchair to move about. Little by little I learned the “art” of accepting my condition, and from that moment I knew that it was possible to make films from a different position than usual. Seated rather than standing. Having shot ME AND YOU I feel I’m back on the run and I’m ready to make another film as soon as possible. Two years ago Niccolò Ammaniti brought me his novella “Io e Te” (“Me and You”), hot off the press. It’s been 30 years since I made a film in Italian. I longed to hear Italian spoken in a film of mine, with Italian actors and to shoot in Italy. Reading the first few pages of the book, I felt a spark... of a new project... to become inevitably a movie. The novella’s storyline had to change somewhat and had to go through several transformations. That’s why I wanted Ammaniti next to me in the writing of the script, together with Umberto Contarello and Francesca Marciano. But some of the biggest differences between the novella and the film were not even in the screenplay. They happened during the shoot. It’s the magic of cinema. I was fascinated by the idea of transforming the obvious “claustrophobia” of a small, stuffy basement room into a form of “claustrophilia”, the love of confinement in enclosed spaces. In ME AND YOU, I made sure that this one cellar had a different look in every scene, a basement storage room designed to be transformed by the boy, Lorenzo, and by the lighting. I wanted the space to constantly have a different feeling to it, so that one could see something new as the story progressed. It took months of research to cast Lorenzo and Olivia. I met with practically every Italian actress of the female protagonist’s age, some very famous and others completely unknown. The truth is I liked the idea of finding two new faces, never before seen in cinema... As for Lorenzo, I couldn’t count the number of boys we met. It had been a long time since I had gotten to know adolescents so closely. I wasn’t able to imagine the face of Lorenzo. But I had no doubts when I saw the big eyes of Jacopo Olmo, his hair like Robert Smith of The Cure, that little face that made me think of a young Malcolm McDowell, but also, mysteriously of a Pasolini character. ME AND YOU is about the longings, disappointments, struggles and dreams of two young people. I guess many of my films have dealt with the youth and their specific emotional issues and states, from the most obvious, like THE DREAMERS, STEALING BEAUTY, but also even films like NOVOCENTO, THE LAST EMPEROR, LITTLE BUDDHA. Now that I am over 70, I continue to be intrigued by youthful characters and by the challenge of capturing their vitality, curiosity. I really saw Jacopo Olmo grow up in front of the camera during the 10 weeks of shooting. Maybe I am a case of arrested development! I heard that “Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola” for the first time a long time ago, on the radio of my car cruising down Los Angeles streets, without a destination. It was David Bowie singing in Italian and trying to contain his English accent. It was the Italian version of “Space Oddity”. He sings “Ground Control to Major Tom, This is Major Tom to Ground Control, etc.” In Italian, it becomes: Tell me lonely boy where are you going because there’s so much pain...”. The Bowie science-fiction song turns into a romantic Italian song. The Italian lyrics are by Mogol whom I admire very much. He’s a great lyricist and the Italian version of the song seems to have been written for that specific scene of ME AND YOU. In my movies, I always like to have a musical sequence. As the great American tradition of musicals taught us, music creates a unique moment where anything is possible. I was excited to try out some new technologies that had evolved during my 10-year absence. I had even originally considered shooting ME AND YOU in 3D. We did several tests in Cinecittà. But the overall process is too slow for me. In my movies every shot gives birth to the next one, and that to the next one... There is no time for the laborious techniques involved in moving the two cameras of the 3D or simply changing the lenses. Maybe in a few years... I then considered shooting the film digitally. But that kind of uncontrollable sharpness was unbearable for me. I had never until then understood how much nostalgia for impressionism is contained in the 35mm so I decided to continue working with the old dear “pellicola”. —Bernardo Bertolucci The Brattles premiere of ME AND YOU opens Friday with shows daily through Sunday, August 3. Visit brattlefilm.org for trailer, info and tickets.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 11:00:00 +0000
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