Original Italian Latin Lover
Francesco Scianna is Saverio Crispo in Latin Lover.
Four years since “When The Night”, in competition at the last Venice Film Festival in 2011, Cristina Comencini returns to film with a choral comedy that marks the last cinema appearance of Virna Lisi, who passed away last December at 78 years of age.
In Latin Lover Virna Lisi is supported by an international cast: Marisa Paredes, Angela Finocchiaro, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Candela Peña, Jordi Mollà, Lluís Homar, Neri Marcorè, Francesco Scianna, Toni Bertorelli, Claudio Gioè, Pihla Viitala and Nadeah Miranda. The story, written by the director with Giulia Calenda, takes place in a small village of Apulia. Saverio Crispo, the great Italian actor, a genius, as described by critic Picci, died ten years earlier. His four daughters, had with different wives in as many different parts of the world, gather in the big house in the Apulia village where the actor was born. The Italian daughter with her partner with whom she’s secretly engaged. The French daughter, with the youngest of her three children had by three different fathers. The Spanish daughter, the only one married, with an unrepentant cheater husband. And finally, the Swedish daughter whom the father hardly ever saw. Two widows also arrive, the first Italian wife who took him back and cared for him in his old-age, and the Spanish actress whom he married during the Italian westerns period.
None of the daughters really knew their great father whom each one idealized and loved during the different periods of his triumphant career. In the midst of the celebrations, when the fifth daughter is still to arrive (the American one identified by a DNA test), Pedro del Rio bursts in instead, the stuntman who seems to know the actor better than anyone else. Amidst press conferences, screenings, and secrets revealed by night, the women of this grand celebrity compete and clash, in a climax of emotions and tragicomic situations.
The film photography is by Italo Petriccione, editing by Francesca Calvelli, set design by Paola Comencini, costumes by Alessandro Lai, while music is by Andrea Farri. International sales of the movie are entrusted to RAI Com.
