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World Fantastic Cinema

Appassionate

Tonino De BERNARDI

Italy1999 95min 35mm Color

Synopsis

Naples, late 1980s. In a movie theatre, during a showing of the movie “Amore Tragico”, Michele indentifies with the story on the screen and kills his wife Gilda, who was having an affair with Michele’s best friend. Thus begins Michele’s desperate flight, which we will observe at points throughout the movie. –Naples, Spanish Quarter, today. Rosa live with her mother, Pina, and Ricky, her mother’s companion. The two women are making artificial flowers and listening to the Neapolitan songs. Caternina, Rosa’s sister, shoots and kills her great love on the day he marries another woman, Teresa. Maria Maddanlena, a beautiful call-girl, witnesses Caterina’s revenge and finds the courage to rebel: she skills a client and, after one last day of freedom, turns herself in. She starts a new life in prison. Outside a farmhouse in the country, hens scratching at the ground uncover a beautiful woman. The stories of all these characters interweave throughout the movie. Everything, every gesture, is highlighted by Neapolitan songs. In a continuous intermingling of reality and dreams, melodies offer the characters the chance to have what they don’t have, to be what they are not.

Diretor

Tonino De BERNARDI

Tonino De bernardi was born in the town of Chivasso, ini the province of Turin, in 1937. In 1967, he debuted with ll Mostro verde, a 16mm film on two screen, one of the most important films of the nascent Italian underground. De Bernardi speeds time with artists in the ‘poor art’ movement and avantgarde writers. He continued his experimentation on life and cinema throughout the seventies, in seclusion, working mainly with 8mm and Super8. Since 1988 he has shot several videos, often completely self-financed.