The film was discovered at the Venice Mostra Vermiglio, a tribute to the Silver Lion and the Grand Prize of the jury chaired by Jane Campion. The director fell under the old charm of the bride of the mountains. Maura Delpero's film tells the story « non-meeting » an Italian deserter soldier and a young woman from a hamlet surrounded by snowy peaks. At once far from the front and caught up with the echoes of the war, Vermiglio evokes a missed act as much as it gives to see a pastoral moment of Italian society faced with great history.
A (a)romantic encounter?
In the middle of the winter of 1944, a Sicilian soldier came to take refuge. Immediately placed under the care of the patriarch, who taught him how to read and write, the little talkable young man quickly caught up with the daughter of his protector with the as harsh as implacable belief. In appearance at least because, in tapinois, the Man of faith hides his few ungodly images to which he willingly surrenders once alone. While listening to a Chopin record from his family office, his daughters escape his authority.
Cold, Italian life covers its moments of intimacy in silence, away from the eyes, in this old barn that adjoins the house and where the rules no longer succeed in curbing the desires of youth. It is here that the younger one starts with the most frugal transgression. A short, masturbated exchange of an evanescent desire for a young woman with a boyish look and who tends a cigarette to the petty malice. A few anodizing words are enough to free the family from the yoke. The time of a suspended moment, the game settles between the girl and this casual and rebellious icon barely out of childhood. Maura Delpera's film does not really have a main personage, on the contrary its narrative is intergenerational.
In Vermiglio, the expression of desire is systematically repressed. Whether in the barn or behind this dresser, where one of the girls in the village doesn't know how to resist the pleasures of the flesh, privacy is discovered where one can finally escape this stifling promiscuity. Work and religion dominate daily life. Village life leaves little room for emancipation. Without ever falling into the anachronistic pitfall of a combat protofeminism that would swear before this naturalistic fresco giving to see ordinary lives, Vermiglio draw the emotions of his characters and his impulses of freedom with modesty. Quiet, the film prefers to trust its beautiful images rather than its felted dialogues.
The blue of the sky
Few are the films to represent peasant life with such accuracy. We discover the harshness of working life, its protocol celebrations and its internal tearing. The deserter and eldest of the three girls fell in love from the first stages of the film. Their marriage is celebrated, while the young woman is pregnant and the war is eternal. But it will be the only moment of carefree joy. 'Cause in Vermigliodesire is systematically caught up in reality. Subjugated by a photograph of blue tones and grain that gives shape to this portrait of the time, Vermiglio cares for his image by elegant frames whose composition recalls the paintings of peasant life.
In an exciting interview with the media The Seventh ArtMaura Delpero explains the rich research done upstream. Documentary Coutumière (Teachers, Nadea and Sveta), the director first confronted her memories from the archives of her own family with those of the deans of the village, the nonagenaires and even centenarians. Maura Delpero claims research « direct emotions » to transcribe this « collective memory » today threatened to forget. From the first preparatory work, she thought of the Flemish painters and winter paintings by Giovanni Segantini whom she communicated to her director of photography. Mikhail Krichman owes this unique blue patina. The table Bad Mothers She also influenced her work, especially for the camera, she says:
« I told him that we would be still, respectful of the immobility of this world. It's not a frantic world. »
His chromatic research led to autochrome photographs, a technique of black and white photos, then painted with primary colors. This allowed us to define this strong graphic identity, recalling that when we are in this mountain village, « We have the impression that the sky is close »She's having fun. Far from pastoral idealism, Vermiglio prefers bitter sobriety and attention to the detail of an aromantic film, where the first juvenile outcasts faint immediately. One thinks of Battle and these few lines of his last chapter entitled The day of the dead. A stolen kiss, like a moment of insolence before the absurdity of the war, a fulgurance in the blue of the sky and the reality of fascism ravaging the bodies behind the Italian mountains.
« The earth under this body was opened like a grave, its naked belly opened to me like a fresh grave. We were stunned, making love over a starry cemetery. »
Trailer of Vermiglio
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