the Guest (second feature)

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Trailer

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the Guest (L'ospite)

the Guest (L'ospite)

the Guest (L'ospite)

original title:

L'ospite

directed by:

cinematography:

set design:

production:

Mood Film, Cinédokké, House on Fire Productions, Bravado Films, RSI Radiotelevisione svizzera, with the support of Eurimages, Regione Lazio

country:

Italy/Switzerland/France

year:

2018

film run:

96'

format:

colour

release date:

22/08/2019

Dumped by his girlfriend and stranded on different friends' couches, 38-year-old Guido tries to transform his wacky urban drift into a chance for a new beginning.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
38-year-old university researcher Guido is forced by the breakup with his girlfriend Claire to confront his emotional fragilities. Too depressed to be on his own, he starts sleeping on different couches embarking on an unexpected intimate journey.
As he tries to convince Claire to remain with him and while preparing a speech on Italo Calvino that will decide his academic career, Guido finds himself adrift on people’s sofas in the role of the heartbroken guest, a figure with whom everyone likes to share their emotions. Like a contemporary Baron in the Trees he witnesses things that people wouldn’t share in public from a very unusual point of view, realizing the big difference between the external surface of relationships and their inner chaotic nature; but it will be only by becoming an active part of other people’s lives that he will be able to take decisions for his own life and grow up as man.
As with my debut film Short Skin, a film about the sorrows of an adolescent secretly dealing with a sex issue that blocks him from experiencing physical intimacy and love while everyone around him seems very confident and pushy, in this movie I want to approach the theme of relationship complexities through the narrow lens of male fragility.
The narration digs into Guido’s insecurities by attacking him from very different sides, underlining his fear for not living up to his own expectations. The bittersweet tone is a very important aspect of this film. The mix of comic and dramatic aspects is a crucial part of the stories I want to tell and the lens through which I look at everyday life that I try to represent on screen. The main inspiration for the stories I want to tell are Woody Allen’s early movies.