After working with Bellocchio on several films, Massimo Fagioli has made his first film.The themes are complex and the film tries to examine the human psyche. In this interview, Fagioli talks about his first film and the reasons why he chose to try his hand at film making

Q.: First of all, why did you decide to make a film all by yourself? Was your partnership with Bellocchio becoming a constraint?

M. F.: Absolutely not. My experience with Marco was certainly very positive. It's just that after a number of years of working with him, I had developed my own style and I thought it was time to express it in this film.

Q.: Bellocchio has seen the film - what does he think of it?

M.F.: First of all I believe he must think well of it since he decided to present it at Adriaticocinema (a film festival organised by Bellocchio). I heard on television that film depressed him, which is the best compliment anyone could pay me. If he had said that I had amused him, I would have failed in my intentions.

Q.: Where did the idea for the film come from?

M. F.: The material didn't start out as a film. At first I wanted to film some conferences and slowly as I looked at the material I decided to do something that would take inspiration from the conferences, but be separate and autonomous. In fact, some of the scenes in the film are real, like the convention which the two characters attend and the scene in t 0he crowded lecture room. The there are also obviously invented scenes.

Q.: Did you have a screenplay?

M. F.: No, the ideas developed from day to day on the set, and the dialogues as well. We tried to plan it, but then as we were filming, the ideas of the evening before didn't seem so convincing.

Q.: If you had to say what your film is about how would you answer?

M. F.: There are many different ways of doing so. I'd say that the underlying discourse regards the great drama of the word, of knowing and of whether images can say much more than a phrase. Anyway, that was my idea, taking up the lesson of Tarkovskij, Bergman, Antonioni... that scenes where apparently nothing happens, are actually dense with meaning. On a narrative level, it is the story of a successful woman who experiences a crisis. Sh ?e finds herself walking barefoot in a class room, and she has no idea why. Then she hears a voice, which is the sign of a new, more spontaneous way of life. It is important to emphasise the research on psychic reality which is behind the film. It is important to distinguish the figure of the impoverished man from the figure of the mentally ill person. They are not comparable. Otherwise we risk returning to the mentality of 400 years ago.

Q.: Is there a specific reason why the main character is a woman?

M. F.: I am very interested in the search for female imagery. In my opinion, unconscious fantasy is typically female, since in the past women were made mute, even though they were not deprived of speech. I was interested in seeing whether this negation of women exists.

Q.: What do you think the destination of your fil Im is? What is its relationship to films in general?

M. F.: I don't know who the film is destined for, certainly for people interested in different language than the one usually found in films. Personally many of today's films based just on action or amusement don't interest me. To my mind films have the potential to tell stories, to have meaning, to initiate serious discussion about fundamental questions, and with a few exceptions, these aspects of film making are ignored.

Q.: But don't you think that even in so called commercial films there might be a message, or that amusement isn't really such a bad thing? Haven't you ever enjoyed an action film?

M. F.: Personally I don't see any message in action films. As far as amusement goes, yes I have seen a few films... but after a while I get bored.

Q.: In your film the characters 'don't seem to speak to each other, they just speak. The table is laid, but nobody eats. Aren't these signs of solitude?

M. F.: I don't think this is a film about solitude. The main character has a fiancé and we understand that their relationship is affectionate. The characters don't pay much attention to what the others say to them...to emphasise their freedom to be what she or he wants with respect to the others, without necessarily falling into the dynamics of a confession where one person speaks and the other must necessarily say something back. There is just no need for that. As for the table, that was a way of counterpoising the bourgeoisie characters who eat and the vagrant who only eats occasionally, ritual versus another dimension without ritual, constriction versus freedom.