INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR (Gianni Amelio Interviewed by Jean-Luc Douin, ‘Cinema means a way of looking. Educating the eye’)

How would you describe the figure of Paolo, the handicapped boy? - I didn’t want to make a film about the tragedy of handicap, but about difference. I wanted to talk about how hard it is to love someone who has this affliction. He’s a presence - a strong and strange one, like Spielberg’s ET. He’s an innocent. But children are not innocents. He’s neither child nor man; he’s rich in his own way, he’s mysterious, unique. He’s not normal, but I don’t see him as a handicapped person. I didn’t want to make a film about the tragedy of handicap, but about difference. I wanted to talk about how hard it is to love someone who is physically different, who has been struck by an affliction.’ How did you find this boy, Andrea Rossi? - I knew that people suffering from muscular dystrophy, swim as a form of therapy. I decided to visit swimming pools in Rome, because I didn’t want to advertise in the newspapers. He was the first boy I met. At first, I was scared. You can’t get him to be docile, he has no memory, no logical thinking, he reacts to sensations. In choosing him, I was taking the risk of being unable to finish the film. But I realised that all the boys with this condition have an expression of terrible sadness. And I was terrified of communicating this feeling of a future without horizons. In fact, with his boundless joie de vivre and his constant joyfulness, Andrea gave me an extraordinary gift. How did he behave during filming? - On the set, he behaved in his own way, the way of a kid who, at the age of seventeen, has no concept of sex, or of what ‘bad’ means. On the third day of the shoot, he came and told me he was engaged to the wardrobe mistress. He said, ‘She’s beautiful, she strokes my cheek, and I hold her hand.’ A few days later, he whispered, ‘She’s going to come to my bedroom tonight, you know!’ And a week after that, he told me he had left Cristina and was engaged to Simone, the clappergirl. I realised that for him, to be engaged meant being intimate, looking one another in the eyes, talking like friends. As Kim Rossi Stuart, who plays his father in the film, said, ‘It’s like a little dog who loves you because he recognises your smell.’ All your films are about children - It’s not childhood as such that interests me, it’s the relationship between the child and the adult. Sometimes I identify with one, sometimes with the other. In THE STOLEN CHILDREN, there was also a child who was trying to find his father. - That’s all autobiographical. I tell myself every time that I’m not going to handle this subject again, and it’s my problem, anyway. My father left me when I was less than a year old, and came back when I was seventeen. LAMERICA, too, was about a redemptive journey. I dreamed of making that journey with my father, and I actually did it with my son. In fact, I hate journeys, in the sense of discovering a country; I see them only as a means of getting to know a person. You’re getting ready to make a film in China. - With THE KEYS OF THE HOUSE I’m beginning a journey in reverse. I’ve spent half my life learning my craft, believing that cinema was all about the camera. Trying to do things better! Too late, I’m beginning to realise my mistake. Cinema is all about a way of looking, about educating the eye, your relationship with the actors. I don’t like to talk about characters, but about people. Interview taken from Le Monde 15 September 2004

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