Roberto Andò’s latest film, Viva La Liberta, is a gentle political satire reminiscent of Hal Ashby’s ‘Being There’, and Andò is currently talking to a “very famous” producer and actor about an American remake.
I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Italian director Roberto Andò while he was in New York City for Lincoln Center’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema about his thoroughly entertaining political comedy, Viva La Libertà. Viva La Libertà is the story of the Secretary of Italy’s leading political party, one in big trouble and with plummeting approval ratings. When things are at their worst, the secretary, played by Toni Servillo, flees in the middle of the night to an old girlfriend’s house (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi ) in France, leaving his closest aide, played by Valerio Mastandrea, scrambling to deal with explanations for his absence.
Instead of admitting that he can’t find his boss, he enlists the Secretary’s twin brother, also played by Servillo, to fill in for him.
READ MY REVIEW OF VIVA LA LIBERTA
Ando based the movie on his own award-winning and best-selling book, Il Trono Vuoto and I asked him about the process of bringing one own’s book to life; had it taken on a life of its own?
‘The idea for the book came first”, said Ando. “I liked the idea of getting inside the head of a politician, and exploring the anxiety around power.”
Ando told me that when the book came out, everyone started to tell him that it would make a great movie, but for an author, that creates a problem, because in making a movie from a book you “run the risk of betraying the novel, and if you’ve written the novel, you risk betraying yourself.”
“So when you make the movie”, he said, “you have to discover something new”. In the case of Viva La Liberta, the novel “went in one direction and the screenplay in another.”
Of course, as a nosy and starstruck American who wants to know everything about actors, I wanted to know everything about Toni Servillo, one of the most talented and successful actors working today.
“Is he getting a big head?” I asked. “Is he a “Divo”?
As it turns out, he is not. He and Andò are great friends and had been looking for a project to do together for a while. According to Andò, Toni is a simple man who has become a “messenger for Italy.”
“It was obvious even when I was writing the book that “it would have to be him (Servillo) and that this gave him the drive to make the movie.
I told Andò that I thought of him as part of the new wave of Italian directors, ones that were changing the face of Italian cinema, and he welcomed that perspective.
He talked about what he called a “mortification” of Italian cinema that had developed, where, unlike in the US where filmmaking is a strategic industry, Italians just wanted movies that “didn’t hurt”.
He told me a great story about Bernardo Bertolucci, who for years made beautiful films that nobody saw. “It was in the moment that Bertolucci decided that he wanted an audience that he began to fill theaters, because if you don’t want an audience, then why would an audience want you?”
“In the last ten years”, he said, “filmmakers have given up on the idea of making films with no relationship to the audience.”
He told me another great story about his contemporary, director Marco Bellocchio’s reaction to the film.
“Bellocchio loved it. He called me and talked about how it reminded him of his own twin, who is deceased. He said that it’s as if the brother who remains must carry to one who has disappeared on his shoulders, and their two worlds are brought together.
I can’t wait to see what Hollywood does with remake, but it can’t be any more charming than the original. It’s already a movie that Americans will love it they get the chance to see it.
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