TORONTO – Stefano Sardo, co-writer of the Roberto Baggio biopic The Divine Ponytail, is releasing his second film as a director with Muori di Lei. It stars Riccardo Scamarcio, Maria Chiara Giannetta and Mariela Garriga in an erotic thriller set against the recent pandemic lockdown – though Sardo insists it’s not a film about the lockdown. 

On its surface, Muori di Lei seems a timeworn story about a bored husband in the market for some adventure. Luca, played by Scamarcio, is locked down while his wife Sara (Giannetta) fights the pandemic on the frontlines, as a Nurse. Becoming a bit stir-crazy and dissatisfied, Luca takes a page from L.B. Jeff Jeffries and begins to voyeuristically explore his lascivious neighbour Amanda, through his apartment window.

It’s a contained story. The characters are put under a microscope as they bounce around in their petri dish. In a recent interview with Variety, Sardo explains that it’s not a film about the pandemic, but a film in the pandemic. “When I had the first idea for this story, we hadn’t yet experienced quarantine. At first it was supposed to be set during a Roman Ferragosto, in the style of Il sorpasso. Then came the lockdown”.

The nationwide lockdown in Italy was officially decreed on March 9th 2020 by the then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Under Conte’s decree, cinemas, theatres, gyms, discos and pubs were all closed. Funerals and weddings were cancelled along with sporting events, including Serie A matches. Schools and universities were shut down.

But it wasn’t long before social media gave the world a glimpse at how Italians, from region to region, were coping with the quarantine. Opera singers giving free concerts from their balconies, trainers doing classes from the terraces, bakers lowering food from their apartments in bread baskets. It was a exactly how you’d expect the country to react, despite the suffering endured.

“The first instinct was to insert subjective elements, such as the sense of existential crisis and finding yourself in a moment in which to take stock of your life. Then, later, the awareness came that not all of us were experiencing the pandemic in the same way. In the film Amanda is going through a tragedy that Luca knows nothing about”, explains Sardo.

Luca and Sara are going through a personal crisis of their own, unsuccessfully trying to have a child. While Sara obsesses over her pregnancy, she obligates herself under duress as a Nurse. “I was inspired by my mother who is a nurse,” explained Giannetta who plays Sara. “When we still didn’t have a clear idea of what this Covid was, I told her to say she was sick and go home. She told me she couldn’t because it was her job. I clung to that answer while I played the character”.

Muori di Lei is now in theatres in Italy from March 20th, distributed by Medusa Film.

(Images courtesy of Medusa Film)    

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