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| Francesca Archibugi on Paolo Virzì: “We actually were students together. We studied with Furio Scarpelli, who was a great screenwriter. I think we both loved him very much.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
As a screenwriter, Francesca Archibugi has worked with director/screenwriter Paolo Virzì on his films Magical Nights (Notti Magiche) and The Leisure Seeker (starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland) with Francesco Piccolo (Virzì’s Human Capital, Saverio Costanzo’s My Brilliant Friend, starring Margherita Mazzucco and Alba Rohrwacher, Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor with Pierfrancesco Favino, Archibugi’s The Hummingbird star Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre and We Have A Pope). Dry (Siccità) starring Monica Bellucci, Silvio Orlando, Valerio Mastandrea, Vinicio Marchioni, Claudia Pandolfi, Sara Serraiocco, and Tommaso Ragno is Archibugi’s third collaboration with Paolo Virzì, this time also with screenwriters Paolo Giordano and Francesco Piccolo.
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| Dry star Tommaso Ragno inside the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
Piccolo is also the co-writer with Laura Paolucci on Archibugi’s The Hummingbird (Il colibrì, based on the novel by Sandro Veronesi) which was the opening night selection of Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center’s 22nd edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.
Archibugi is a wizard of writing for a big cast, the overlapping strands of narrative, the unexpected discoveries about how we humans are connected. In Virzì’s Dry, a clearly COVID-inspired and climate change conscious tale, a horrible drought has turned Rome into a barely pre-apocalyptic wasteland. The Tiber has no water anymore (leading to archaeological discoveries we can guess at from afar), and the TV stations list the days without rain. 367 and counting. The population is losing it.
There is Loris (Valerio Mastandrea) who now runs a kind of car service. From his passengers we can assume that this wasn’t always his profession, because most of them are ghosts, such as his parents and a man he calls Mr. President. Actor Alfredo (Tommaso Ragno in great form as one in Virzì’s catalogue of highly annoying men) is so totally obsessed with his social media presence that he neglects his family and only shows disdain about the stage role he plays in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People - the play all about water that can be seen as precursor to Spielberg’s Jaws.
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| Valentina (Monica Bellucci) works her charms on professor Del Vecchio (Diego Ribon) |
We see the rich diving into their walled-off pools, while angry masses protest outside their gated areas. A scientist, professor Del Vecchio (Diego Ribon) flies in from the north of the country for a television appearance. At first he doesn’t want to be bribed and we root for him. But this is a film by Paolo Virzì, who holds a special place of contempt in his cinema heart for academics, educators, those who think they know right from wrong so thoroughly but have built merely a sandcastle that the smile of a beautiful woman out-of-reach can blow down.
In Human Capital, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s charm utterly exposed the despair and life envy felt by the teacher played by Luigi Lo Cascio (excellent as Pope Gregorio IX in Susanna Nicciarelli’s Chiara). In a similar spirit in Dry does movie star Valentina (Monica Bellucci) work her charms. “So many pages did you write,” she gushes in the penthouse balcony jacuzzi, and suddenly, as if he were Professor Unrat to her Blue Angel or Aschenbach, who feels the urgent need to dye his hair, his previous life is out the window.
Despite the water crisis people are who they are. A man steals an expensive watch from his host at a dinner, another escapes from prison in a laundry van, another lives with his dog in a car. A girl with green hair who is a musician has an interest in Sembene (Malich Cissé) from Senegal, who happens to have a crush on her as well, and speaks eloquently about the advantages of millet.
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| Valerio Mastandrea as Loris |
Will the rain ever fall again? What will be learned? Dry is about human and earthly needs and takes an amused look at all that remains hidden when the river runs.
Anne-Katrin Titze: You not only have the opening night film of Open Roads in New York, but you are also part of the writing team for Paolo Virzi’s Dry. I believe you’ve worked with him before on The Leisure Seeker. Tell me about working with him on this futuristic horror scenario of Rome without water!
Francesca Archibugi: I actually went to school with Paolo. We actually were students together. We studied with Furio Scarpelli, who was a great screenwriter. I think we both loved him very much. I myself am a screenwriter, I write. Our working together is a very fraternal collaboration.
Working with Paolo on films is not just something I do in a professional capacity. It’s actually a lot of fun; we write together in the office. Maybe we exchange lines, we discuss things, we even tend to fight sometimes. Unlike my own process - when I write my own films, I work in absolute solitude. In this case the original idea was from Paolo Giordano, a young writer and we developed that idea. Looking back at the sense of alertness we felt during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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| Heiress Raffaella Zarate (Emanuela Fanelli) confronting the protesters |
AKT: Oh yes, Covid experiences are clearly a part of this. You can sense it everywhere. An interesting detail is the play being performed - Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, which is all about water. I just recently mentioned it in connection with the many shark sightings here in New York at our coastline. Memorial Day is here and Jaws is clearly related to Enemy Of The People. How did this play end up in the film?
FA: There was a show done in Rome last year of it by Massimo Popolizio. It was only after we saw it that we saw certain similarities. You often start a film with an initial idea and then as you develop, as you write, the characters then take on a life of their own. And each character in this case is responding to the drought in their own way. There isn’t really anything anthropological or sociological to our approach. The drama really starts inside each character.
AKT: The scientist in the film who we at first think is so steadfast and such an honourable being, then meets the movie star, played by Monica Bellucci, and is seduced. These feel like typical Virzi characters to me - I sensed a bit of Human Capital in it. The hair dye, I thought, turns him a bit into Aschenbach from Death in Venice [a city that, comes up in an all important dialogue in the jacuzzi on the terrace]. Can you tell me more about this character?
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| Francesca Archibugi on Dry (Siccità): “In this case the original idea was from Paolo Giordano, a young writer and we developed that idea.” |
FA: It’s not that there is the nobility or any Thomas Mann like character in him. There’s more of the idea that when someone arrives in Rome, Rome slowly enters into them. Here we have the scientist from the North, very serious guy, but the longer he stays in Rome, the more he himself becomes a Roman.
Read what Francesca Archibugi had to say on The Hummingbird, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nanni Moretti, Patti Smith, and The Clash.
