Hopefully she hasn’t taken out a restraining order against me. I wasn’t exactly “cool as a cucumber” meeting this HUGE star.
So I thought I’d get to ask a few questions at a press conference and what I got was an intimate conversation with one of my favorite actresses in the world, Paola Cortellesi.
COMING SOON: MY INTERVIEW WITH PAOLA CORTELLESI
I’ve loved Paola since I first saw her in Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo’s Tu La Conosci Claudia? She’s in New York City to accept the Vento d’Europa, the Wind of Europe International Award and attend a screening of her film, Massimiliano Bruno’s bittersweet Gli Ultimi Saranno Ultimi, The Last Will Be Last on 10/28 at the Loreto Theater (Sheen Center) at 7:00. A Q&A will follow the film.
I wasn’t surprised that she was so lovely, her fan club has been telling me for years. I, personally, have never seen an actress with so many faithful fans, and when I asked Paola about them, she told me about the amazing gift that they’d given her. (More about this to come.)
Cortellesi, the actress that I’ve been calling “Italy’s darling” for years stars in Massimiliano Bruno’s “dark comedy”(so dark I wouldn’t call it a comedy) Gli Ultimi Saranno Ultimi. In it, she’s Luciana, a factory worker married to a guy (Alessandro Gassman) who’s the love of her life, but allergic to work, so she’s the bread-winner.
They don’t have much, but he’s the love of her life and she shrugs off his money-making schemes and doesn’t pressure him into getting a job; that is, until she gets pregnant and all hell breaks loose.
They’d been trying to have a baby for years, and as Luciana gazed out at all the other people with babies in the world with a look (and maybe only those of us who have faced infertility issues could identity it) of sadness and resignation, realizing that it may just never happen for her.
Until it does, but the joy of impending motherhood lasts only a few months. The boss finds out she’s expecting and he refuses to renew her contract. He says it out loud, that’s the reason, so it must not be illegal in Italy to fire you for that. (In the USA they’d at least have the decency to make up something else about it so the company doesn’t get sued.)
One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is that Cortellesi’s movies are not more available in the US. When it’s a world in which E La Chiamano Estate and Venuto Al Mondo are available to us and Paola’s Scusate Se Esisto and Gli Ultimi Saranno Ultimi are not, something is wrong with the distribution process. This will be corrected when I get my I Love Italian Movies Distribution Company up and running.
You can, however, see her in the Taviani Brothers’ Maraviglioso Boccaccio (Wondrous Boccaccio).
I Love Italian Everything 