fl: What is your film Il Cartaio about? And when is it going to be out in the cinemas? da: The film should be out in October in Italy and after a while in other countries that bought it, such as France, Spain, Great Britain and Belgium. You know, I am not so good in telling the plot of my movies when I have just shot them. It is like I cannot schematise them. Very roughly, it is the story of a bunch of investigators, of policemen, that chase a serial killer who acts in a very particular way. He kidnaps a girl and plays poker on the Internet with the police. If the police win he lets the girl free, if not he kills her. Things keeps going on in this way, when all this machinery suddenly stops. fl: Where does the idea of the film come from? da: The idea is more than three years old. I was thinking about some stories for television with other writers, among whom were De Cataldo and Ferrini, to create a series of eight episodes for the Italian National Television (RAI) channel. I sketched two stories, one of which dealt of a contest between a killer and the police. And I decided to make a movie of it. fl: How do you write now? Do you lock yourself into a hotel room, as you used to? da: While I was writing Il Cartaio, I was actually in a hotel room, as I was moving. Well, I wrote the first part of the film in my house, in my old flat, in which there was almost nothing left, indeed, it was quite a desolate ambient. We can say that solitude fits the writer's activity like the mourning to Electra! fl: The film is a co-production. Did you have any budget problems? And who is the Italian distributor? da: The Italian distributor is Medusa. When you deal with a co-production all the times tend to lengthen, the bureaucratic ones, the actors' ones… fl: How was your relationship with the actors? da: The cast is very varied and lively. Stefania Rocca is very good and sensible, a plucky and strong woman, one of the best pupils in her class at the Centro Sperimentale (the most famous Italian Cinema School). Claudio Santamaria has done very well too, he has a short but incisive role. Silvio Muccino is very young, in the film he is an expert on videogames, a kid who has a sort of brain disposition for that kind of activity. I researched, there are many kids like that, I met and talked to them. They are incredible, so quick… Liam Cunningham is a quite famous Irish actor, he starred in, among other movies, The First Knight. He is a very good theatre actor, I went to England to meet him and I chose him. He is very good in acting parts like a soldier, an officer. In the movie there is a scene in which he had to use the gun and he acted it as a soldier, holding the gun as the soldiers use to do, not in a kind of 'shy' way. His role is that of an English policeman who comes to Rome to help the Italian police in the investigation of the murder of an English girl. This confrontation let me bring to light a difference in systems, in values, in methods between the two police forces. As always I am interested in the figure of the stranger who is in another world, in part accepting the new reality, in part not. Exactly like I do when I am abroad. In my long stays in the United States I had an American life, supporting the baseball teams, going for a drink in the places they used to… At the same time though, I felt a stranger in a way. I am fascinated by this ambivalence, that is why I often write about strangers. fl: You chose the cinematographer of Irreversible, Benoît Debie. How did you work together? da: I chose him because I wanted to experiment with cinematography without using cinematographic lights, using just the real lights, the sunlight, the moonlight, the light of the bulbs, of the street-lamps. I have been struck by the cinematography of In the Mood for Love, one of the most beautiful of the last ten years, and I looked for Pin Bing Lee, one of the two cinematographers, but there was nothing to do. I also contacted the cinematographer of Brotherhood of the Wolf, Dan Laustsen, a Dane, he is used to film with natural light too, at least in part. At the end I met in Paris the director of Irreversible, Gaspard Noé, who suggested that I contact Benoît Debie, who is Belgian, for the kind of cinematography I had in my mind. In Belgium they have very little money to make movies, we are Hollywood compared to them! So there's a disposition to get along, say. From all this, for example, the Dardenne brothers come out. The Belgians are almost "khomeinistic" of the light. They want it natural as far as it is possible. So we had a totally common view. To be honest the only concession we had to that kind of cinematography has been the construction of eight wooden street-lamps, that we brought with us to lighten some scene. fl: This film is not being edited by Anna Napoli, as were the previous ones. Who did you choose? da: I asked a young editor to work with me, Walter Fasano, a little genius of the Centro Sperimentale, who has already edited a lot of films. He knows cinema very well, and the first time I met him he demonstrated to me that he knew deeply my cinema as well. fl: I'd like to ask you something about the relationship you have with Rome. In your very first movies you told of a weird Rome, mixed with other Italian cities, with Inferno and Tenebre in particular, you gave a very peculiar vision of your city. Then, maybe after your stay in the USA, you have lost a bit of representing it this way. In Il Cartaio, instead, we can say that Rome becomes important again. da: Sometimes I did show Rome in my movies. At a certain point, as you say, after the magic inventions of Inferno and the metaphysic ones of Tenebre, it lost interest to me. In this new film, that indeed has to do with urban investigations, I wanted to show not only the well known Rome, but the Roman suburbs, places I got to know during the electoral campaign of some years ago, when I was a candidate for the elections. In that period I went very deeply around the periferic areas of the city, I was in the houses, in the shops, in the supermarkets. I had the chance to explore very interesting outskirts, from the architectoral side too. In Il Cartaio I was fascinated by showing both the Rome of the Octavia's Portal, of downtown, and the suburban Rome, not well represented in recent films. You know, I like Rome, it is my city. But I don't love it in a very particular way, I am not madly in love with her. Making movies I try to show both sides of the town, the very well known ones and the hidden ones. fl: What do you think of the new wave of horror films that have invaded our screens and what about their American "revisions"? da: The new wave of Eastern horror cinema is interesting, minimalist. Even though in Italy Japanese and Korean cinema is not very well known. Hong Kong cinema is more popular. Moreover I think that this very dry style in making horrors can influence American horror cinema, that ultimately was becoming too clownish. Maybe we are coming back to a kind of horror that is more tense and more adult. fl: Are you already working on another project? da: I have had the idea for a film turning in my head for a year, I have been thinking about that a lot. And the television project idea still stands, if not just for a pilot.

Francesco Locane

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