Q&A WITH MAURA DELPERO
The Italian filmmaker Maura Delpero’s innovative approach to films about women and homes has distinguished her as a rising talent in contemporary cinema. Her first film, Maternal (2019), about homes for teenage mothers administered by nuns, earned her the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 72nd edition Locarno Film Festival. Her follow-up, the recently-released Vermiglio, traces the lives of an Italian family that includes nine children over the course of one year near the end of World War II. With its exquisitive cinematography and nuanced performances, the film proved a stand-out at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize.
Vermiglio is now showing in select theaters across the United States.
Q. Your film deals with the many relationships embedded in a large family and that family’s relationship to its village. What drew you to these topics?
A. I feel as though a limited space is an advantage. I like what the French people call the huis clos — little limited spaces. I think they can work as a microcosm, like a human study case. Talking about a lot of people is a really big challenge in cinema. As a person and as a director, I’m much more interested in multiplicity and prismatic points of view. I think it offers more complexity and is more interesting politically.
The film’s main inspiration was the family of my father. In a way, I related to how the family was constructed. It was a family of ten kids, so a lot of temperaments and things in the film came from my memories. I mix things and fictionalize. I take what I need from reality and work with it.
When I begin to write, I follow what happens to the characters and try to listen to them — listen to what’s happening to them and what they’re asking me. I never put something from the outside onto a character. I always try to follow them and see where they go, what they want, and what they need. It’s a longer process, but I think it’s more organic.
Q. Your film takes place during World War II, yet many of its observations about womanhood remain pertinent — its exploration of queerness, sexual freedom, and childbirth. How did the period setting inform your filmmaking?
A. I thought that time was interesting because it was talking about us from another point-of-view — talking about us from our yesterday, from our day before yesterday. Sometimes just changing seats makes you see things from another point-of-view, more clearly.
I felt that it was interesting to look at who we were to really feel who we are. To see a woman who never steps out of the kitchen and keeps giving birth to children while her husband is at the bar smoking cigarettes makes you feel the status of woman more clearly. The difference between the mother and daughter also becomes more visible. The daughters belong to the same time period and are still very limited in their choices, but you can feel their longing for auto-determination beginning to grow. A central character like Lucia begins as a country girl and ends up as a city woman who has to go to work and say goodbye to her child. She will be more alone and more free, more atomized and less in touch with community, more individual and less judged.
The past in the film is not one in which it is as though women are in jail, it is a past in which they can already whisper at night about what they are longing for. I recently spoke at a screening of the film in London and there were a couple of women who said, “I’m so happy that I’m beginning to watch films in which I see our desires.” I thought it was incredible they were saying that about a period film, but it really shows the lack of female desire in international cinema. Step-by-step, we are feeling this, but it’s natural because there are more women behind the camera.
Q. How did you shoot the film and what references did you have in mind?
A. I thought that time was interesting because it was talking about us from another point-of-view — talking about us from our yesterday, from our day before yesterday. Sometimes just changing seats makes you see things from another point-of-view, more clearly.
I felt that it was interesting to look at who we were to really feel who we are. To see a woman who never steps out of the kitchen and keeps giving birth to children while her husband is at the bar smoking cigarettes makes you feel the status of woman more clearly. The difference between the mother and daughter also becomes more visible. The daughters belong to the same time period and are still very limited in their choices, but you can feel their longing for auto-determination beginning to grow. A central character like Lucia begins as a country girl and ends up as a city woman who has to go to work and say goodbye to her child. She will be more alone and more free, more atomized and less in touch with community, more individual and less judged.
The past in the film is not one in which it is as though women are in jail, it is a past in which they can already whisper at night about what they are longing for. I recently spoke at a screening of the film in London and there were a couple of women who said, “I’m so happy that I’m beginning to watch films in which I see our desires.” I thought it was incredible they were saying that about a period film, but it really shows the lack of female desire in international cinema. Step-by-step, we are feeling this, but it’s natural because there are more women behind the camera.
Q. How did you shoot the film and what references did you have in mind?
A. The main references were paintings. When I sent the first references to the DoP, they were all paintings. There were the Flemish, there were some works by the Italian painter Giovanni Segantini, and then there were some romantic period painters like Friedrich and Turner.
They were references that led us to the aesthetic concept of the film: a still, fixed camera that was like a painting. I really wanted this little man being in this big nature. It can be harsh up in the mountains. You can get hot milk in the morning and die because of the cold at night. The film is really about the relationship between man and nature, which was very strong in rural societies at that time.
That’s also why the film is structured around the four seasons. The rural mindset of the four seasons supplies the texture of the film. We were looking for something that was not as defined as digital tends to be. With the colors, a lot of the time I asked myself, “How do I represent a past that is also present?”
In the beginning, I couldn’t find a color because I felt black-and-white was too past, and also a pity for the four seasons because they are so visually strong in the high mountains — they allowed me to be very elliptical, because when you see the new season you understand there’s been a push forward. At the same time, I did not want the very saturated colors that belong to contemporaneity, nor those nostalgic sepias. Then, I found a technique called autochrome — it’s a photographic technique from the beginning of the last century in which black-and-white photos were kind of painted with primary colors. I thought, “This is past and present all together, the same image.”
Q. What’s a happy accident you’ve experienced on set?
A. We were praying for snow a lot of the time on set because we were not sure we’d have enough since it’s snowing less and less these days. It was real praying. We talked to peasants who study the behavior of bees because bees behave in different ways if it snows or not.
Then, there was one day in which it was supposed to snow but it wasn’t snowing. There was a lot of sun and we were desperate. In a sudden moment, little flakes began to fall. We already had all the SFX people there and I said to them, “Go away, we don’t need artificial snow anymore.” And it began to snow a lot. The DoP was like, “You’re a mountain girl because you know that these little flakes will turn into a big snowfall.” I’m a lucky person. It was beautiful.
Q. Is it important to have a creative routine, or do you prefer spontaneity?
A. I have a routine that is related to what I was talking to you about. It is a listening routine that is programmatic. Through some exercises, I put myself in a situation in which I’m more perceptive. When I decide what I will write about, I do some more exercises that help me get closer to my unconscious. My creative process aims to fish in my unconscious. I believe that there are a lot of things inside us, but that they are deep inside and the big task is how to reach them. Reality also inspires me, but I really try to open certain doors that our unconscious closes.
Q. What is the last film you saw and loved?
A. This year has been the year in which I have seen the least amount of films in my life. I’m releasing a movie, I’m doing awards campaigns, and I have a little baby. There’s no time for films because I’m always on a plane and when I jump into the plane I fall asleep. I did watch one nice film on the plane. It’s called Never Rarely Sometimes Always.
Q. What image would you like to end this interview on?
A. The Bad Mothers by Giovanni Segantini. It’s a beautiful snow painting.
