La Vita che vorrei
Italy,
2005, 125 min
Shown in 2006
CREDITS
- dir
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Giuseppe Piccioni
- prod
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Lionello Cerri
- scr
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Giuseppe Piccioni, Linda Ferri, Gualtiero Rosella
- cam
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Arnaldo Catinari
- editor
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Simona Paggi
- mus
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Michele Fedrigotti
- cast
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Luigi Lo Cascio, Sandra Ceccarelli, Galatea Ranzi, Fabio Camilli, Ninni Bruschetta, Camilla Filippi, Paolo Sassanelli
- source
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Adriana Chiesa Enterprises, Via Barnaba Oriani 24/A, Rome, 00197. FAX: +39-06-8068-7855. EMAIL: info@adrianachiesaenterprises.com.
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COMMENTS
Giuseppe Piccioni in attendance.
OTHER
While the opening credits of The Life I Want are still rolling, we are privy to the screen test of Laura (Sandra Ceccarelli), an aspiring, insecure actress, who has recently been cast in her first starring role opposite Stefano (Luigi Lo Cascio), an established popular actor. When he joins Laura for their first joint script reading, Stefano quickly succumbs to her sensuous aura and fragile vulnerability. The characters these two thespians freely embody resemble 19th-century doomed lovers of Camille and La Traviata tradition. It isn’t long before art bleeds into life and Laura and Stefano become lovers. Director Giuseppe Piccioni seamlessly interweaves the intimate duality of the film’s story and the actors’ lives. Laura and Stefano are opposites in every way. A Method-style actor, she is spontaneous and highly emotional. “She’s lost her way a few times,” a character comments, and apparently her acting now benefits from these past indiscretions. Conversely, the remote, suspicious Stefano “can’t stand actors who actually cry.” Acting, he insists, has “nothing to do with feelings or truthfulness.” When Laura magnetizes the attentions of every male within a pheromone-radiating distance, including prospective directors, Stefano’s personal jealousy becomes professional. Evoking on-the-set romance films such as Truffaut’s Day for Night and Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Life I Want alternates between humor and compassion, with Ceccarelli and Lo Cascio perfectly cast as the beguiling but befuddled lovers.
—Cathleen Rountree
FACTOID #123
San Francisco native Mervyn LeRoy, director of the Hollywood classics Little Caesar and Goldiggers of 1933, was honored with the Festival’s first tribute October 22, 1965.
