original title:
una vita in cambio
directed by:
cast:
Toni Garrani, Elena Arvigo, Stefano Fresi, Maria Cristina Blu, Simone Mariani, Paolo Ricci, Diego Florio, Claudio Puglisi, Svetlana Kevral,
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
set design:
costume design:
music:
Muvi Gruvi Luca Nostro & Lucio Perotti
production:
Own Air, with the support of Regione Lazio
distribution:
country:
Italy
year:
2017
film run:
75'
format:
colour
aspect ratio:
2.35:1
Tormented by guilt, a wealthy old man (Toni Garrani) is visited by a stranger (Stefano Fresi) with whom he
begins a kind of chess game: an unconscious trick to reckon with the obsession that he has plunged since he
got involved in the life of a young woman (Elena Arvigo).
After the death of her lover, left alone to fight against unemployment and job insecurity, the woman refuses any
help from the old man: without any real human contact, his offerings become even more obsessive and his
generosity maybe hides only the presumption of control her life.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
The film’s screenplay was inspired by a story by Bernard Malamud titled “Have mercy,” with an adaptation which,
true to the theme, twists the plot starting from the setting of space and time.
Faced with a history of guilt that explores the ambiguity of good and evil on the banality of contemporary, in
which the main characters are so hostile to change and had to succumb inevitably, the film I wanted to make
belongs to all effects the noir genre.
I interpreted the dry dialogue, the long silences of the script, with a mysterious and dark atmopshere and then
with a realistic picture made of sometimes poorly lit environments, lights, shadows and contrasting colors,
scenes and costumes, which tell a lot the internal conflicts of the characters.
The light sources are scarce as in reality: there is a little need to dissolve the light and stay in the darkness.