'Orpheus', fascinating Italian debut
In cinemas, Virgilio Villoresi's debut feature, presented at the last Venice Film Festival. Die, My Love" is also among the new releases
Key points
One of the most interesting first works of the year is the big star of the weekend in theatres: it is 'Orfeo', the feature debut of Virgilio Villoresi, a director who had already demonstrated his talent in short films and who has reached full maturity with this work that is decidedly outside the canons we are used to, in our cinema and elsewhere.
Dino Buzzati's 'Poema a fumetti' is the narrative basis for the story of Orpheus, a character who since childhood imagines stories around an abandoned villa opposite his home. A lonely and visionary pianist, during an evening at the Polypus - the club where he plays - he meets the gaze of Eura: an absolute love is born between them, but she hides a secret and then disappears. One evening, Orpheus sees her enter a small door, follows her and, just before the threshold, meets the Green Man, an enigmatic figure who seems to know the mysteries of that passage. Once through the door, Orpheus enters a visionary afterlife, inhabited by creatures such as the Melusine, the Wizard of the Woods and parades of skeletons.
"It has become for me an opportunity to merge languages cultivated over time - between craft animation, experimental cinema and optical techniques - into a symbolic and sensorial tale. I wanted to realise it thinking of cinema as a place of dreams, where the spectator begins a dreamlike journey': with these words Villoresi accompanied 'Orpheus' to this year's Venice Film Festival, where it was presented out of competition.
The film boldly dives into pure surrealism, focusing on strong psychoanalytic symbolism and a rhythm that fully follows the logic of dreams.
