Article by Elisa Gnani

Translation by Silvia Matera

We are rarely forgiving with Italian fiction filmmaking. We tend to consider it like a box full of unassuming or mediocre products, but films like Il corpo prove us wrong.

A remake of the Spanish film of the same name by Paulo Oriol, Il corpo by Vincenzo Alfieri is a work of obsessive attention to detail, starting with its screenplay. An attention that extends throughout its whole production thanks to the role and the degree of control its author can exercise: designer, screenwriter, director and editor of the film. Alfieri seems to be, essentially, a demiurge: a status that many will criticize because, since the dawn of time, cinema is teamwork. Instead, few will realize that this peculiar condition allowed him to fully achieve his goals. An arthouse thriller of this caliber can only be led by a sole brilliant mind, such as Alfieri’s.

There are two main spheres of interest: sound and image. After all, as the director says: “Sounds are life, we are made of sound”. So, it is not by chance that sound work begins physically on set to be further refined in post-production. The initial silence later leaves room to the creaking of a door which introduces us to a dark and frightening atmosphere. And then the fateful words around which the whole narration is built upon: “My wife married me to spite a man, and I soon discovered that I was that man”.

The protagonist interpreted by Claudia Gerini is a powerful woman, lonely and subtle, who turns melancholy into cruelty. Her name is Rebecca. A conscious decision made in a not particularly veiled manner, used as a reference to the Hitchcockian universe that appears like a vortex with no way out. From beginning to end, for example, the film plays around the colours red, black, green and yellow, used in the same way as in Vertigo.

A vast knowledge of cinema and seriality is the key ingredient with which to make a film that finds the right balance – neither too tied to the past nor forcibly innovative. From references to the great authors of contemporary cinema to the young actors discovered by the director while watching  Summertime and Boris, the film takes a gamble by trying to improve upon something we have  already seen, while trying to make a new product out of it. A successful bet.