“The cynicism of young people in a thriller of the soul” with kids who don’t know how to love – Corriere.it

TURIN «A thriller of the soul? Yes, it can be, there is a mysterious component between ambition and love, an ambiguity that creates suspense». Pappi Corsicato returns with a film on the art of lying. A love triangle that has a very different aesthetic sign from its “abstract” past, acid and pop, neon-realist, this is how his cinema was defined. Perfect illusion, after the Turin Film Festival, in theaters from the 15th, sees a young SPA attendant, Giuseppe Maggio, happily married «to an enterprising peperino», Margherita Vicario. But he paints, that’s his dream and he wants to be an artist. The meeting with a wealthy young woman who puts him in touch with a gallery owner, Carolina Sala, «small, with a face à la Jean Seberg» (her mother is an unrecognizable Ivana Monti as white as cotton candy), will plunge everyone into the well of illusions.

Have you thought about Woody Allen’s Match Point?

«No, if anything to Balzac and Woolrich, the American writer. I liked to tell a story with very young actors that was not too over the top, more linear, more classic, short like all my films (82 minutes), with Brahms’ music adding a melancholy and melodramatic tint, which had fewer symbolisms and mockery caustic, a story for the story”.

“It applies to all three. I don’t know if it reflects the times, certainly there is a form of cynicism and detachment. They have strong ambitions, there is the illusion of being able to do anything, a practical interest mixed with loving feelings, using the other. There are out of focus images to underline the ambiguity: do they really love each other? He, who seems to be the great manipulator, in the end, after a car accident that he hasn’t even seen, is put in the way. Everyone minds his own business.’

Is the art world as evil as they say?

“Every area is thought to be the worst. Contemporary art is difficult to understand and evaluate, a bit like cinema, it is difficult to establish objective criteria. I go instinctively, I don’t think too much. Francesco Bonomi, the one who says I hate everyone and everyone hates me, does himself, is the character of the art critic. For the painters I wanted a realistic connotation, the paintings are real, Schnabel, Koons, Cattelan, Clemente».

Desdemona says, nothing is easier than deluding yourself.

“Because man believes what he wishes to be true,” says Shakespeare. Othello sees in her, white, young, beautiful, the world that does not belong to him; and the opposite is true. Delusion is a stimulus that leads you to commit crazy bungles. Often you don’t know you have talent but you delude yourself that you have it, then you come to terms with reality, as happens to the protagonist».

And you, what did you delude yourself about in life?

“I’ve fallen in love a thousand times. The Internet is an illusory society, where everyone thinks they can do everything. There is a lot of talk about influencers, even fashion designers influence. Rather, it intrigues me how some guys who show off succeed and others don’t at all, and this happens regardless of talent ».

«Eh, at the age of 28 I was his assistant in Tie me up. The first director I met, I couldn’t have chosen better. A visionary, colorful, bizarre world. A carousel.”

Why hadn’t he made films for ten years?

«I made documentaries on painters and a TV series. A film for theaters is a joint of many things. A lot is produced, perhaps too much and there is an asymmetry between quantity and quality».