Vermiglio

Maura Delpero: Vermiglio (IT/FR/BE 2024). Wedding dance of Pietro Riso (Giuseppe De Domenico) and Lucia Graziadei (Martina Scrinzi).

Vermiglio ou La Mariée des Montagnes / Vermiglio - vuorten morsian / Vermiglio (English and Swedish title).

    Fiche technique :

IT/FR/BE 2024. Sociétés de production : Cinedora, Charades, Versus Production et Rai Cinema, en coproduction avec RTBF. Production : Francesca Andreoli, Maura Delpero, Santiago Fondevila Sancet et Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli . Coproduction : Carole Baraton, Pauline Boucheny Pinon, Jacques-Henri Bronckart et Tatjana Kozar. Production déléguée : Yohann Comte, David Levine, Pierre Mazars et Nick Shumaker

Réalisation et scénario : Maura Delpero

Photographie : Mikhaïl Kritchman - couleur - 1.85:1 - camera: Sony CineAlta Venice 2, Bausch and Lomb Super Baltar Lenses.

Direction artistique : Marina Pozanco

Décors : Vito Giuseppe Zito et Pirra

Costumes : Andrea Cavalletto 

Musique : Matteo Franceschini

Son : Dana Farzanehpour

Montage : Luca Mattei

    Distribution :

Tommaso Ragno : Cesare Graziadei, le père

Martina Scrinzi : Lucia Graziadei, la fille aînée

Giuseppe De Domenico : Pietro Riso

Roberta Rovelli : Adele Graziadei, la mère

Carlotta Gamba : Virginia

Orietta Gamba : Zia Cesira

Santiago Fondevila : Attilio

Rachele Potrich : Ada Graziadei

Anna Thaler : Flavia Graziadei

Patrick Gardner : Dino Graziadei

Sara Serraiocco : Anna Pennisi

Camilla Pistorello : la femme dans le rêve sicilien

    Loc: The film was shot between the Vermiglio, Carciato and Comasine towns in the Trentino-Alto Adige region.

    Langues originales : italien et ladin

    Genre : drame

    Durée : 119 minutes

    Sociétés de distribution : Paname Distribution (France), Lucky Red (Italie)

    Dates de sortie :

Italie : 2 septembre 2024 (Mostra de Venise) ; 19 septembre 2024 (sortie nationale)

Canada : 9 septembre 2024 (Festival de Toronto) ; 19 mars 2025 (sortie limitée)

France : 19 novembre 2024 (Rencontres cinématographiques de Cannes) ; 19 mars 2025 (sortie nationale)

Finlande : 7 mars 2025 - Cinema Mondo

Belgique : 19 mars 2025

    Récompenses : 

Mostra de Venise 2024 : Grand prix du jury

Festival international du film de Chicago 2024 : Gold Hugo

    Nominations

Golden Globes 2025 : meilleur film en langue étrangère

Oscars 2025 : préselection italienne pour l'Oscar du meilleur film international (non retenu dans les nominations finales)

    Vu samedi, le 5 avril 2025 UGC Ciné Cité Les Halles, Salle 15, Pl. de la Rotonde Forum des Halles, accès Porte du Jour, M° Les Halles, Ligne 4, Paris 1er

Synopsis (Wikipédia): " Trois sœurs, Lucia, Ada et Flavia, vivent dans le village de montagne italien de Vermiglio avec leur père, instituteur au village, leur mère, régulièrement enceinte, et leurs quatre frères. Les sœurs partagent le même lit et échangent certains de leurs secrets. C'est la dernière année de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et le conflit est omniprésent dans les esprits. "

"Un soldat déserteur blessé, Pietro, est ramené dans le village par un cousin dont il a sauvé la vie. Lucia, la sœur aînée, tombe amoureuse de lui ; ils ont une relation, Lucia se retrouve enceinte et ils se marient."

" À la fin de la guerre, Pietro décide, à contre-cœur, de rentrer momentanément dans sa région d'origine, la Sicile, pour revoir ses parents. Il promet d'écrire à Lucia, mais aucune lettre n'arrive. Avant d'accoucher, Lucia apprend par la presse que Pietro était déjà marié en Sicile et que sa première épouse l'a tué en apprenant son double mariage. "

Wikipedia: " Delpero decided to make the film after her father's death as a way to help ensure that the traditions in which he had grown up were not lost. "

AA:  Maura Delpero's Vermiglio is a story of a family with seven children. Coming myself from such a family, I can identify with that. But because in my childhood of seven siblings there was never a dull moment, I find the subdued atmosphere of Vermiglio a bit strange. 

Perhaps life in the high north of Italy is/was like that, in contrast to the extroverted regions of the south. Orson Welles in Portrait of Gina (IT 1958) stated that in order to have high opera and drama, you just needed to turn on the camera on the streets of Rome, because Italians are/were born actors.

Starting in 1944 and continuing until the liberation, Vermiglio covers the heyday of neorealism, but Delpero's approach is the antithesis of neorealism, and it could not be any other way, because neorealism was about "reality writing its drama directly on film", and in 80 years, reality has changed.

The intimate drama feels authentic and heartfelt, and the performances are deeply moving. Vermiglio is the coming of age story of Lucia Graziadei (Martina Scrinzi). In the forest the siblings meets deserters whom they help. Lucia falls in love with and marries Pietro Riso (Giuseppe De Domenico). Pietro is shot dead in Sicily after the end of the war – by his first wife. He had committed bigamy. 

Lucia breaks down but is able to give birth to Pietro's baby. She contemplates suicide, feels estranged from the baby and leaves her at an orphan home in the care of her sister Ada, now a nun. But Lucia will retrieve her baby as soon as possible.

The father Cesare Graziadei (Tommaso Ragno) is the teacher at the mountain village, and education is highly valued. In contrast, Pietro is illiterate.

The score has been composed by Matteo Franceschini, and also the period soundtrack is appealing, combining the obvious with the singular. We hear traditional music of the province and stirring choir performances. The teacher father plays shellac records from his collection that he cultivates for educational purposes: Chopin, Schubert, Vivaldi. Familiar classics are reborn in every generation.

The distinction of Vermiglio is its breathtaking visual grandeur. It has been shot by Mikhaïl Kritchman in the ravishing landscapes of the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol mountain regions, recently also visited by Terrence Malick in A Hidden Life in the Italian Teodone/Dietenheim, doubling for Austria.

The art of the light is comparable with the greatest oil paintings, including Dutch masters like Vermeer. The film is on the verge of turning into a series of tableaux of genre paintings. But Vermiglio is haunting and unique. The winter light, the snow, the reflections and the mist wrap everything in a soft, hallucinatory and dreamlike veil. It is a coherent poetic expression of the memory of the past.

P.S. 22 April 2025. I am reading the magisterial dialogue volume A History of Pictures: from the Cave to the Computer Screen (2016/2020) by David Hockney and Martin Gayford. Martin Gayford: "As the 21st-century artist Jeff Wall has noted, there was a strange situation in the later 19th and early 20th centuries: some of the best photographs were taken by painters - such as Degas and Eakins - meanwhile many photographers strove to imitate the effects of painting. This movement is called 'Pictorialism'. Edward J. Steichen's photograph of the Flatiron Building of 1904 mimics the soft atmospheric and tonal effects of a painting by, for example, Whistler, or of a Japanese woodblock print. Steichen added layers of colours to the original image, making this as much a work of the hand as the lens." (p. 254)

The visual art of Vermiglio has an affinity with Pictorialism.