TORONTO – With “Il Ritorno di Casanova”, Oscar winning Director Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo) loosely adapts Arthur Schnitzler‘s novella “Casanova’s Homecoming”. The film was shortlisted for the 96th Academy Awards and stars Toni Servillo as Leo Bernardi, an aging Director whose latest romantic tryst has him in knots – and his latest film in jeopardy. 

“Il Ritorno di Cassanova” parallels Casanova’s 18th century quest to bed a girl less than half his age with Bernardi’s present day love affair. The film’s aged protagonists, once highly venerated men of culture and renown, find themselves being replaced by the shiny and new – for Casanova a young soldier from Mantua and for Bernardi, an upstart Director. Both men, now living in the shadows of their own exploits, find themselves shrinking as new horizons grow increasingly out of reach.

On the story’s main theme of adaptability Salvatores states: “In a movie [as a Director] you can decide how to start it, how to thread a story, how to end it. You can be the Deus Ex Machina. But you cannot control life as there is no script…and therefore the most difficult thing in life is to adapt to the changing of the seasons”.

Salvatores juxtaposes the two narratives using black & white for contemporary scenes and colour for the past, suggesting that the human experience renders all time periods interchangeable. In the present, Director Bernardi meets a young girl while scouting the countryside for shooting locations. The two form an unlikely and turbulent romance, which takes a complicated turn and threatens the completion of his film. Making matters worse is that Bernardi’s film (about Casanova) is no longer the talk of Venice’s Film Festival – as an upstart filmmaker steals the spotlight.

Now in the twilight of his career, and entangled in an affair, Bernardi sees his predicament mirrored by the aged Casanova in his film. The notorious 18th century libertine, played by Fabrizio Bentivoglio, wallows over his wrinkles as he tries to seduce a young proto-feminist who remains unmoved by his courtship. But while the proverbial Father Time catches up with us all, some more than others are prepared to face it. In Salvatores’ film, both men walk dangerously close to the edge of their mortality before realizing the steep drop before them.

“Il Ritorno di Casanova” is self-reflexive and the movie-within-a-movie device feeds into its existential themes. Salvatores’ characters search for relevance and meaning in the twilight of their lives, an experience few if any of us can escape.

When interviewed by a Venice Journalist in the film, Bernardi comments: “Casanova wonders if he still has the strength to continue to play his character. And I wonder if I still have time to grab a remnant of life”. Salvatores echoes the sentiment of his fictional Director with an unambiguous finale to his own film. The message is clear: that we have more time than we sometimes believe, and what we do with that time has the power to change lives – long after we’re gone.

“Il Ritorno di Casanova” is neatly woven, beautifully photographed and filled with spirited performances. He may be older…but twenty films in, Salvatores “still has it”.

Watch “Il Ritorno di Casanova” on Prime Video Italia

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Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix