Italy / Germany,
1996, 93 min
Shown in 1997
CREDITS
- dir
-
Edoardo Winspeare
- prod
-
Edoardo Winspeare, Dieter Horres, Jean-Jacques Varret
- scr
-
Edoardo Winspeare
- cam
-
Paolo Carnera
- editor
-
Carlotta Cristiani
- cast
-
Cosimo Cinieri, Fabio Frascaro, Chiara Torelli, Anna Dimitri, Ines d’Anbrosio, Paolo Massafra, Lamberto Probo
- source
-
Seawell Films, 45, rue Pierre Charron, 75008 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-47-20-15-43
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Skyy Prize Nominee.
OTHER
When a U.S. fighter pilot is shot down over the Salentin peninsula at the bottom of Italy’s heel in the summer of 1943, a widowed father and his three daughters take him in and hide him from the authorities. The pilot, an Italo-American whose real family actually came from this beautiful but impoverished land in the heel of Italy, develops a love not only for the area but for one of the daughters, Cosima, who’s already promised to the son of the local rich man. What follows is a tale of love torn by jealousy, individual desire unraveled by familial ties, the magical rituals of a culture distorted by the oppressive nature of tradition. The mostly nonprofessional cast gives affecting performances, especially the young women who play the three very different daughters. Former documentarist Edoardo Winspeare has crafted an exquisite poem of a film, using to great effect the richness of both the landscape and the local customs (The film’s title has a double meaning that evokes two of these customs: a regional dance with stylized flirting called the pizzica, and the terrible fate of women who are “stung” by a tarantula and are thereafter tarantata—driven to dance into eternity). The film was a hit at the Edinburgh Festival, and critics have said it invites comparison with that other recent pastoral romance set in southern Italy, Il Postino.
FACTOID #208
Before the showing of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest at the 40th SFIFF, Bay Area editor Walter Murch (who selected the film to screen in the Indelible Images series), passed out fortune cookies to the crowd with Bresson’s musings on making films.
