Filme

A Matter of Heart

Film Info

Italien 2009 | 104 min. Regie: Francesca Archibugi

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A Matter of Heart

Synopsis

Alberto’s and Angelo’s “engines seized” on the same night.
Angelo is a young body shop owner from a very poor background who has done a bit of everything and finally made something of himself. Alberto, a successful screenwriter, crazy, loud-mouthed and clumsy as a rhinoceros, initially does not get the reference.
They become friends in the emergency room. They connect instantly, and no one is more surprised than they are that they understand each other so completely. But they are men, and thus they often disguise their emotions behind jokes and jibes. Just like teenagers on their first camping trip. Once they have left hospital, life seems so different: they are conscious of every heartbeat, and they find they need each other. Staying together means being with the only person in the world who - at that moment - understands them. Alberto, who is instinctively a loner, is unable to commit to his girlfriend and has withdrawn like a hermit crab into his shell, which in this case is Angelo’s house, right above his body shop specialising in classic cars, located in the Pigneto neighbourhood of Rome. It is an inscrutable world, at times wonderful, at others sinister. But in that house there is a family: Angelo’s wife, Rossana, voluptuous and pregnant with their third child, a kind of woman to the nth degree; and two children, Perla and Airton, an angry adolescent girl and a little boy agitated by recent events.
Alberto begins to relax in the comfort of an atmosphere that is not only new to him but also something that he never wanted.

Cast & Crew

Regie

Francesca Archibugi
Produzent

Giovanni Stabilini, Riccardo Tozzi, Marco Chimenz
Drehbuch

Francesca Archibugi
Kamera

Fabio Zamarion
Hauptdarsteller/in

Antonio Albanese (Alberto), Kim Rossi Stuart (Angelo), Micaela Ramazzotti (Rossana), Francesca Inaudi (Carla)

Statement Regisseur

“...via Fanfulla da Lodi, in the middle of Pigneto, with its low houses and its crumbling walls, was in its gritty grandiosity, its extreme smallness, a poor humble, unknown alley, abandoned under the sun, in a Rome that was not Rome.” Now, in that little street where Pasolini’s Accattone lived, there is an aroma of kebabs and of Cocktails with vodka and cranberries, hippy women bicycle between the Singhalese and the body shops and everything is both very up-to-date and very old. In the vicinity is the Mandrione of JULIET AND THE SPIRITS; the old Quadraro neighbourhood of II FERROVIERE, the Gordiani estate where they shot at Anna Magnani from a truck in ROMA: CITTÀ APERTA; and Torpignattara where the Citti brothers were surrounded. A Rome we no longer see in the cinema. How has it changed? How have we changed? I wanted to make a film about Italy, although in a slightly oblique way, through an encounter between two characters from two irreconcilable worlds, although not that far apart. And when someone dies, a world always comes to an end. Even if he is no one special, it is never insignificant. It means a lot, particularly for the family and for the narrators. Actors are important for all directors, but for those who make films centred on characters, they are the cornerstones of their work. I was also given the gift of exceptional actors: every one of them gave of themselves in a way that was moving and profound.