Da Grandi, arriving on Amazon Prime Video on June 28, is a reinvention of the 1987 film Da grande, starring Renato Pozzetto. It was directed by Fausto Brizzi, guest, together with the female protagonist Ilenia Pastorelli, of the Filming Italy Sardegna Festival.
We arrive at Forte Village, the splendid setting of the Filming Italy Sardinia Festival, at two in the afternoon of the first really sultry day of this summer 2023. Time to eat and the press activities immediately begin. We woke up early and tiredness is felt, but the sympathy and self-irony of Ilenia Pastorelli they are a great balm for the general mood. Thanks to her, the first press meeting of the event directed by Stephanie Rocca and dedicated to cinema and TV, it turns out to be cheerful and pleasant, awakening us in a flash from our torpor.
Con Ilenia there is Fausto Brizziwho wanted her in the cast of From Greata comedy which is part of the programming of the Filming Italy Sardegna Festival and which will arrive on Amazon Prime Video on June 28. The film is a remake/reboot of big (1987), starring Renato Pozzetto and directed by Franco Amurri. In the new version there are 4 protagonists and they have the face of Henry Brignano, Luca Bizzarri, Paolo Kessisoglu e Ilenia Pastorelli.
“The film was born out of a chat I had with Franco Amurri” – explains Brizzi. “We are good friends, I have written many things with him for television. You must know that I have always had an obsession with big, which was a film that somehow I thought was mine, because it deals with themes that I have always liked. We started thinking about how to update it, wondering what differentiated today’s children from those of the past, and we understood that to tell the children of our time we had to invent a multiple story. In the opening credits of big there is a sequence that I could not put, in which the protagonist child, and that is Renato Pozzetto as a child, he leaves the house with the keys and, together with his 4-year-old sister, crosses Rome on foot and takes the child to kindergarten, after which he goes to elementary school. Today, no one would believe such a scene.”
If the character who was of Cockpit has switched to Henry Brignano, Ilenia Pastorelli she plays the part of a little girl onto whom her parents project their obsessions and dreams. For this reason the poor thing is forced to play tennis in order to become a champion. It goes without saying that the actress had to learn the forehand and the backhand, as she herself narrates: “Two months of tennis lessons made me do Faustus, put me together with a very nice champion who however destroyed me, also because, rightly so, she wanted to get results. And indeed she succeeded, because after 1 and a half months I knew how to do the service. ” La Little Shepherdsin his first collaboration with Brizzi, had a lot of fun on the set, unlike the director. “The attitude was like a class trip” – explains the good Faustus – “because my actors had the freedom to behave like 8-year-old children. You will understand that, if you give an actor this freedom, it’s over”.
“Especially for the only woman present, it’s over” – he comments Ilaria – “because I was with extremely lively boys, but it was certainly the set on which I had the most fun ever, and then big it was my favorite film as a child, and when I met the screenwriter, I was very happy, also because, when I saw him as a child, I never, ever thought that I would one day act in a similar film. Instead Big it became my favorite movie as I got older.”
Someone asks Little Shepherds even if her parents invested her with a mission not for her sake but for theirs. “My mother still struggles to understand what she’s doing”- she replies, making us laugh out loud. It was enough for my mother that I ate. I wanted to go to art school, but my father recommended the classical one, five years of ancient Greek: all good, for heaven’s sake, but at least a hint of personal income tax and VAT would have been useful for me. My mom never projected her expectations onto me, but I can imagine how difficult it can be for a child to find themselves in such a situation. I took a lot of dance lessons, and my mother would pick me up with a basket of meatballs and gravy. There were many mothers who instead said to their daughters: ‘Don’t eat anything we have to aim for the opera house’, or: ‘If you’re great, you’re less so’. Luckily me. I lived this experience with freedom, equality, fraternity”.
Brizzi he wasn’t so lucky: “My dad was a lawyer and wanted to leave me in the studio, so I was the desperation of my family. I did a year of Law, then they took me to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, to direct, and then I gave up law school, but my father, even when I was 45 and had already written 30 films, and had shot 10, kept telling me: ‘You’re an intelligent boy, you’ll get your degree in 4 years, come here, practice” .
Since he directed Night before exams, Fausto Brizzi went through different types of comedy, to then focus on the family movie: “I changed the genre of comedy thinking that a film has a life in the cinema and then one on television or on some other platform, therefore taking into account the fact that at a certain point the film will be seen at home, probably by parents with children next to them. That’s why for some years now I’ve been making films that are a little more familiar, hoping that this will make them a little more evergreen. Night before exams that was it, then came the sentimental films: Males against females, Females against males, Ex e How beautiful it is to make lovewhich was also a little more stringent. From Great an adult can see it but also a six-year-old child”.
Ilenia Pastorelli instead ranges between laughable films and dramatic films, and it must be said that it succeeds well in both types: “When I shot with FaustusI came from a bit of a strange period, because I had made a film with Darius Silver which upset me a bit, because I was playing this Czech prostitute running around with a serial killer on her tail, there was also a scene with snakes. The experience was beautiful, but I believe that comedies lighten the heart of both those who interpret them and the viewer, so I prefer them. I’m starting a dramatic project in a bit, so I’m lucky because I can wander, a bit like what happens in life, where one day it’s dramatic, another day it’s comic”.
Returning to Renato Pozzetto, the films that saw him as the protagonist were overwhelming also by virtue of a healthy wickedness and fabulous teasing. Let’s reflect, together with Fausto Brizzi, on the fact that nowadays similar comedies would be banned because they are politically incorrect: “The protest would start from his catchphrase ‘Eh la Madonna!” – says the director. “Today it’s more difficult to make people laugh, you have to be more careful. If I think back to some things I wrote, especially in Christmas films, I realize that there was sexism, transgression, non-conformism and impropriety towards many categories. No one was indignant, in fact everyone was laughing. I think that in a while it will be impossible to make a comedy, but I like to think that we are now going through a transitional phase. A lobby of comedy writers will soon emerge who will say: ‘ Guys, who cares, let’s go!’. In America they have always been more careful than us, more restrained, more modest. Even when they make films Dumb and + dumb, they remain very childish. Our Fantozzi they were much more incorrect. For example Fantozzi he kept telling his daughter that she was a baboon. My friends, then, it is a very incorrect film. I am convinced that there will be a rebellion against all this, at least in Italy”.
“I hope there is also a revolution in the nude of women” – he adds Ilenia Pastorelli. “I’ve seen a breast a couple of times, and people have asked me, ‘Eh, but what about breasts?’. It seems like a stupid question and out of context. With all that it shows… it doesn’t I see nothing wrong with nudity in the cinema, which is never total nudity. The thing that really surprised me was that above all women criticized me. It’s a strange censorship, and I don’t understand why, instead of uniting and make some sort of sexual revolution, we’re always divided on this matter!”