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À travers le personnage de Leo, les mouvements migratoires prennent d’autres contours, dans leurs raisons d’être et dans leurs formes. Un mouvement qui semble perpétuel, avec quelques similarités et de nombreuses différences. À travers ce phénomène, le film raconte les relations humaines, intergénérationnelles, une rencontre improbable qui permet aux deux protagonistes de se reconstruire, d’avancer, de se développer mutuellement sans renier leur passé réciproque, leurs différences et leur réalité. Par ce jeu en miroir entre Leo et Antonio, le réalisateur Donato Rotunno « raconte une rencontre entre générations, chacune avec son propre bagage » avec, comme point commun, l’Italie comme racine. Après ce film, assurément, on se sent bien !
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Sur le tournage, en présence du réalisateur Donato Rotunno. On the set, in the presence of director Donato Rotunno.
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4 1, 2, 3 & 4. Io Sto Bene, extraits. Io Sto Bene, extracts.
t’s the story of a guy in his twilight years and a young woman who stumbles through life’s adventures. Their unlikely encounter is going to change their paths. As the end of life is approaching, Antonio Spinelli (played by Renato Carpentieri) finds himself all alone as a widower, since his wife Mady (Marie Jung) passed away. She was his life compass, offering unconditional support, and whom he met in his adoptive country, Luxembourg. His one true love, she was there for him throughout his whole life. Thanks to her, he learnt to see the world differently, questioning the traditional values he brought from his homeland, the south of Italy. Now that she’s gone, memories are all that remain to get him through the days. He takes refuge in these recollections, letting himself be gently carried away by the flood of emotions, sweeping him away from reality. Leo (Sara Serraiocco) is a budding artist who has left Italy to travel Europe with her boyfriend. She drifts from bar to nightclub performing as a VJ (video jockey). The bohemian lifestyle is soon cut short as he dumps her and returns home. She finds herself alone in the Grand Duchy, a place she barely knows, without any money or prospects. However, fate chooses this moment, when both are
consumed by their loneliness and disarray, to bring them together and help them rebuild different futures. Antonio becomes a father figure to Leo at a pivotal moment in her life. Meanwhile, Leo enables Antonio to realise his unfulfilled desire to be a father. Through Leo, he learns to understand that the love he has for Mady is no less intense despite her death. Io Sto Bene switches back and forth between the two protagonists’ pasts. We see flashbacks of Antonio’s life during the historical migratory boom of the 1950s and 1960s. With Leo, the why and how behind her migratory movements takes a different form. Their seemingly perpetual itinerant state has some similarities and many differences. The film uses this theme to explore intergenerational human relationships through their unlikely encounter, which enables the protagonists to rebuild, move forward and develop mutually without abandoning their reciprocal pasts, their differences and their futures. Leo and Antonio’s destinies mirror one another, and director Donato Rotunno uses this to “portray an encounter of different generations, each with their own baggage” and which share one thing in common: Italy as their roots. An uplifting film to warm the soul! 10 / 2021 —
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PHOTOS : TARANTULA, MAISON MODERNE
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