“With ‘Things Unsaid’ I explore the extreme consequences of love, as in the operas of Verdi and Puccini”

Coming to cinemas, “Things Unsaid” il new, awaited film by Gabriele Muccino. The Roman director returns with this new title to explore the themes that are dear to him, those of human fragility and fallibility and how these reflect on our lives and our relationships. The story is that of two couples of friends in crisis (one with a 13 year old daughter), which they decide to share a holiday in Tangier, and the focus is on the lies, on the unsaid, on how much we sometimes don’t want to see the obvious truth and how this can lead to disaster. A very lively story, which tends towards noir at the end, with a cast of first-class actors: Stefano Accorsi, Carolina Crescentini, Miriam Leone and Claudio Santamaria.

“Things unsaid”: Gabriele Muccino and the cast talk about the film

Muccino says on the genesis of the film: “It is inspired by the book Sircusa by Delia Ephron, many before me have tried to make films but had not succeeded, but I wrote it in 25 days, the plot was so clear and beautiful, that putting it into a screenplay was a very quick process. What Delia does in the theater and in her books corresponds to what I do with my films, it tells of characters in search of happiness and serenity but not finding it. So when I read the book, I was I realized that I knew those characters. I immediately called Stefano Carolina and Claudio who said yes without even understanding what I was talking about. Then I looked for my Elisa, the most important character, a very complex role, because she lives entirely in the implosion of emotions, thoughts and feelings, she is a woman who wants to live without asking questions that could hurt her: intelligent, cautious, empathetic. I saw the film Amata the crazy chemistry she had created with Accorsi, which is why I called Miriam Leone for the. role which is the one from which the narrating gaze comes”.

On the fact that this film, especially in its second part, can almost be defined as a noir, Gabriele Muccino is not convinced: “I have never thought about the genre, for me this it is a film of relationships taken to the extreme as in the works of Verdi and Puccini. I didn’t think about noir, that wasn’t my goal. I was interested in exploring the extent to which human imperfections could cause damage, a theme that is typical of La Traviata, the great romantic operas: there are always extreme characters ready to do anything for their goal which is love. So this is a film about love and its consequences.”

He adds: “The setting of Tangier is very importantthe Moroccan city is almost a second character: “I wrote the film in a town in Spain which is right in front of Tangier, I took the ferry one day, I saw the city and I found it magnetic, so close but so far away, a few miles by ferry and you’re no longer in the West. It seems like a place where you feel like you’re without masks and I thought it was the right place to make my characters lose their masks.”

Even in this film, it is the women who act, the men who remain passive (and cause trouble), on this Gabriele Muccino has clear ideas: “My view on men, including myself, has never changed. I thought I was evolving more than I have actually evolved, while I have always thought, it is clear, that women are a threat to male fragility, because men are more unprepared for life than men. I observed and told this story from the female point of view, a declared”.

Miriam Leonethus describes her Elisa, a woman in love but disappointed by the betrayed person, but also a woman who refuses to see reality: “Elisa lives for her husband’s love, she is his muse, and she has also in a certain sense put herself aside for her husband’s talent, then she is unable to get pregnant, and goes into crisis, she organizes a trip to Tangiers to try to recover things. This film talks about how fragile human relationships are, it concerns everyone. All of us, like Elisa, to some extent struggle to accept inconvenient truth, let’s pretend not to see things”

Stefano Accorsi makes a broader reflection: “I am always happy to work with Muccino because his films and his characters always tell something about us, perhaps precisely that part that we don’t like to see and admit. Therefore, in some way we all feel called into question by his stories. Even in this case, he shows us how it can grow bigger and how many consequences our gestures, even those made unconsciously, can have. In this film we also manage to talk about our human experiences. Muccino makes us go from seeing and judging someone to understanding ourselves. themselves”.

Carolina Crescentini instead she speaks like this, of her somewhat unhinged Anna: “Anna has many levels, she is the truest, but she is sincere with others more than with herself, she does not accept a grown-up daughter and needs her less, but she does not have the courage to take the reins of the situation because she loves the family package, so she prefers anger and frustration in order to face what she does not know, therefore neuroses are a must. She has undergone a process of abandonment and does not want her daughter to suffer, she abandons herself but she is already abandoned, because she chose a man who doesn’t love her, she screams to be seen, it’s a sort of psychopathic Don Quixote. She is obsessed with control, convinced that by dressing her daughter as a younger child she thinks she is controlling but in reality everything crumbles with her daughter, husband, everything goes wrong. He lives badly, he should go to a good one, but he never will”

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