Il materiale emotivo / Un dragon en forme de nuage / A Bookshop in Paris

Sergio Castellitto: Il materiale emotivo / Un dragon en forme de nuage / A Bookshop in Paris (IT/FR 2021) starring Sergio Castellitto (Vincenzo) and Bérénice Bejo (Yolande). Sur le Pont Mirabeau. Facing Pont de Grenelle-Cadets de Saumur (with Statue de Liberté Paris, invisible behind Castellitto in this photo but visible in the film itself).

Pieni kirjakauppa Pariisissa / En liten bokhandel i Paris.
    IT/FR © 2021 Rodeo Drive / Mon Voisin Productions / Tikkun Production. P: Marco Poccioni, Marco Valsania.
    D: Sergio Castellitto. SC: Ettore Scola, Furio Scarpelli, Silvia Scola – Margaret Mazzantini, Sergio Castellitto – from the story "Un drago a forma di nuvola" by Ettore Scola. Cin: Italo Petriccione – colour – 2.39:1. PD: Massimiliano Sturiale. AD: Emanuele Pellegrino. Set dec: Ilaria Fallacara, Matteo Mattei. Cost: Andrea Cavalletto. VFX: Virginia Cefaly. M: Arturo Annecchino. S: Alessandro Rolla. ED: Chiara Vullo. Casting: Angélique Luisi.
    C: Sergio Castellitto (Vincenzo), Bérénice Bejo (Yolande), Matilda De Angelis (Albertine), Clementino (Clemente), Sandra Milo (Madame Milo), Alex Lutz (Gérard), Marie-Philomène Nga (Colombe), Nassim Lyes (Alain), Maxence Dinant (Padre Mathieu), Bruno Goeury (cleptomane), Alessio Montagnani (clochard Hector), Julie Ciccarelli (Fioraia). Voice talent: Domitilla D'Amico (Yolande's voice).
    Languages: French and Italian.
    Studio: Cinecittà Studios, Rome.
    Loc: Paris, France.
    IMDb, Wikipedia: 89 min, Finland: 97 min
    Festival premiere: 5 March 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.
    Italian premiere: 7 Oct 2021.
    French release (VOD internet): 28 Nov 2021.
    Finnish premiere: 19 May 2023 – released by Future Film – with Finnish subtitles by Lauri Holma & Tarja Sahlsten / Swedish subtitles by [the credit flashed by too fast].
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 3, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 22 May 2023.

AA: Based on an unproduced screenplay by Ettore Scola (1931–2016) and his team, A Bookshop in Paris was first adapted as a graphic novel by Ivo Milazzo, imagining Gérard Depardieu and Massimo Troisi in leading roles.

Sergio Castellitto catches engagingly the emotional arc of the story about the ageing bookstore owner Vincenzo (Castellitto) and his paralyzed daughter Albertine (Matilda De Angelis). Vincenzo seems to have been caught in a timeless existence: he does not even have a mobile phone. He is shaken up from his routine by a wild spirit, the actress Yolande (Bérénice Bejo).

The film is openly theatrical and studio-bound, mostly shot on Cinecittà sets. In the beginning and the end there are even opening and closing curtains.

A Bookshop in Paris is a celebration of books and reading. Vincenzo is committed to literature. Yolande is a living negation of his calling: "Who needs books? We live in the digital age." "You are dead men walking". But Vincenzo is happy to fight for his cause: "Literature is eternal. Actuality is lethal".

When Yolande complains that she has no time for big books, Vincenzo gives her Marguerite Yourcenar's Les Trente-Trois Noms de Dieu. Other books discussed include Boris Vian's L'Écume des jours, Le Journal d'Anne Frank, Madame Bovary and Schopenhauer's Hedgehog's Dilemma. Oscar Wilde is quoted ("I live in terror of not being misunderstood").

But the true meta-dimension is provided by Dostoevsky. A Gentle Creature is another "small book" recommended by Vincenzo to Yolande who has no patience for big ones. It was filmed by Bresson as Une femme douce. A poster of Visconti's Le notti bianche, an adaptation of another Dostoevsky tale, White Nights, can be seen on Vincenzo's wall. Dostoevsky sets his story in the midnight sun period by the river Neva in St. Petersburg. In Visconti's imagination we are on a wintertime bridge in the Venezia Nuova district of Livorno. Castellitto's film reminds us of Bresson's version, Quatre nuits d'un rêveur, shot on Pont-Neuf (and paid homage to in Leos Carax's Les Amants du Pont-Neuf).

Castellitto stages a central scene on another bridge over the Seine, Pont Mirabeau (see poster above), famous from a poem by Apollinaire. Like Dostoevsky's dreamer, Vincenzo is waken up by a vibrant woman, only to be discarded by her in the end. But both he and his daughter have been jolted back to life.

Like Visconti and Bresson, Castellino approaches his story as a fairy-tale. We are in a tourist Paris of retouched / photoshopped picture postcards. The bookshop is on the pictoresque side of Montmartre like Amélie's home. Eiffel Tower is visible on the other side, on the left bank. Everything is in pastiche. There is an obvious, even flaunted, digital look.

Despite the artifice, the "emotional material" promised in the film's title is genuine. But again, perhaps due to pandemic circumstances, there is a lack of vigour and power in the movie.