Virzì: ‘Five Seconds, my film about darkness and life’ – Cinema

“It is a film that begins in a mysterious way and starts from darkness to gradually reveal its painful plot, then ignites in a lively and funny conflict and closes with a feeling of trust. A film about death and life, about how even pain can generate tenderness and protection.” This is how Paolo Virzì talks about Cinque Secondi, his latest film which passes today to the 20th edition of the Rome Film Festival and then arrives in theaters from 30 October with Vision Distribution.

The protagonist is a never so melancholy and irascible Valerio Mastandrea, complete with beard and cigars, in the role of Adriano Sereni, a successful lawyer (“a bourgeois from northern Rome” the director calls him ironically) who now prefers a ‘buen retiro’ in the countryside to his prestigious firm. He therefore lives completely isolated in the converted stables of the beautiful Guelfi villa which is falling into ruin. If it were up to him he wouldn’t want to see anyone, but suddenly a group of girls and boys arrive, accompanied by Countess Matilde Guelfi Camajani (Galatea Bellugi) who settles in the villa and starts taking care of the abandoned vineyards again. The clash between Adriano and this outdated ‘commune’ of young people is inevitable, but in the end it will undermine part of his sadness. The sunny study partner Giuliana (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) will also arrive in his hermitage to bring out Adriano’s past and try to break his isolation. “When I received the subject of this film – says Mastandrea – even though it was only fifteen pages, I immediately felt a strong emotional push, I was moved, because I understood that it was a melancholy, dark role that I could then contaminate with lightness as always happens when I work with Virzì. A role very close to me, which struck a chord with me.”

“It was already written that I would inhabit the character of Giuliana by entering her universe with the obligation of the light inside and of that gratitude that I always have when I work in Paolo Virzì’s films. When I am on set with him it is like a spa treatment for me, because we always laugh at the tragedy of life and for me they are bottles of oxygen” underlines Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. For Galatea Bellugi, a 28-year-old French actress and capricious leader of the group of young people who occupy the abandoned villa, “the formula that could save the young generations is that, as happens in the film, of having trust and above all of being together”. Finally, in the press conference, an affectionate exchange between Virzì and Mastandrea. “If Valerio had been busy with Martin Scorsese for three years I would have stopped and waited for him – says Virzì -. I would not have replaced him with any other actor”. And Mastandrea replies: “Paolo has always done it like this, first he would audition everyone else and then he would say to me: ‘Don’t you want to do it yourself?’ Ours has always been a mutual expectation, which however hides esteem, respect and friendship.” The cast of Cinque Secondi – a Greenboo and Indiana Production production in association with Vision Distribution and Motorino Amaranto in collaboration with Sky and Playtime – also includes Ilaria Spada and Francesco Dominedò.

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