One Woman's Writing Retreat: Film Review

Director: Silvio Soldini
Screenplay: Silvio Soldini, Doriana Leondeff
Photography: Luca Bigazzi
Scenography (Set design): Paola Bizzarri
Music: Giovanni Venosta
Editing: Carlotta Cristiani
Sound: Maurizio Argentieri
Costumes: Silvia Nebiolo
Make up: Esmé Sciaroni
Cast: Licia Maglietta, Bruno Ganz, Marina Massironi, Giuseppe Battiston, Antonio Catania, Felice Andreasi.
Running time: 114 minutes
Producer: Istituto Luce S.p.A., Monogatari S.r.l., Rai Radiotelevisione Italiana

Synopsis
During a family vacation with an organized bus tour to Ercolano and Rome, Rosalba, a housewife from Pescara, is forgotten in a motorway restaurant. She is supposed to wait for her husband and her children to get her back, but accepts a lift to go to Venice. She never went to Venice before, the following day it's Sunday . . . That's how starts Rosalba's little adventure for... what was supposed to be just one day of freedom, becomes a “little vacation” as she writes to her husband.

After a first night in a cheap hotel in the suburbs of Venice, Rosalba, almost penniless, starts a new life: she makes friend with Fernando, a puzzling waiter from Iceland who loves poetry and who hosts her in his apartment, she finds a job at a flower shop run by an anarchist florist, and becomes close friend with Grazia, a beautician and holistic masseuse who lives next door to Fernando's apartment. Encouraged by Fernando, she also starts to play the accordion again, as she loved to do when she was younger.

In the meantime Mimmo, Rosalba's husband, in Pescara is furious. He finds out that one of his plumber employee, Costantino, is a great detective-novel reader, and sends him to Venice to find his wife and bring her back. When, after many adventures, Costantino finally finds Rosalba, he'll get caught into something he didn't plan either, for he falls in love with Grazia.

Ketty, sent by Mimmo, finds Rosalba, makes her feel guilty and convinces her to go back home. Fernando is sad and lonely but reacts to the depression by starting for Pescara . . .

Review
Bread and Tulips is a sweet and delicate comedy, almost a fairy tale where reality and dreams blend constantly in a tender web that catches the audience and makes us feel part of the story. Although the characters could be easily classified as “ordinary people” (an unsatisfied housewife, a bullish husband, a plumber, a waiter, a masseuse, a florist . . . ) they are rich in feelings and dreams. Although they might seem to belong to a world without time, they never want to escape reality and never appear imaginary. Rosalba, the main character, is an unhappy housewife with a bullish and unfaithful husband, but she's not disenchanted, she's sweet and naïve, still curious about life, and capable of wonder. Fernando is from Iceland, a land almost lost in the far North of the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by ice and fog and mystery, he knows by heart famous poems from the16^th Century, but works as a waiter. Fermo, the florist, is old and grumpy and expects every customer to know the intimate meaning of flowers, but he's nice underneath the façade, and Grazia, who suffered many love disappointments, still believes she'll find perfect romance and passion someday.

And Rosalba easily swings from reality to dreams and back to reality with grace and wonder till the end of the story, leaving the audience free to decide if the final scene is real or is just one of her dreams, in perfect harmony with the movie's physical setting.

It's a special Venice that we admire in the movie, not the town eternised by pictures and tourists, but the suburban city, still far from the hectic timing of our modern towns, filled with footfalls, and breeze, and the swashing and lapping of the canals. A city out of time, ancient, enchanting and fabulous, but very real and productive because of its numerous factories all around its suburbs where people go to work every morning, like Fernando's daughter-in-law. The Venice of the council estate, far from the luxurious buildings, genuine and true, yet . . . almost unreal.

A special note should be written about the sound editing of this movie. As Maurizio Argentieri, the sound Editor, explains, he accepted the challenge to reproduce the delicacy of the sounds in Venice. With the help of two microphone technicians he registered all the sounds behind the actor dialogues, like water lapping in the canals, the silences of the little alleys, the breeze, and the footsteps, in stereo sound without limiting the actors' interpretations, or rather giving them more freedom in lowering, if they wanted to, their tone of voice.

The result is wonderful for the audience that can breathe the marvellous and extraordinary Venice atmosphere.

Silvio Soldini and Doriana Leondeff, who wrote the screenplay, chose a fun title for this comedy, a title that almost rhymes in its original Italian version (sound). They preferred tulips, symbols of love and desire in the ancient Middle East, instead of roses, because those were the flowers that, more than a thousand years ago, filled up the Sultans' gardens, and the pages of The Arabian Nights. And Venice has been, in the past a city turned towards the Orient as its culture, its history, its art and architecture, still testify.

It was a real challenge for both of them to write a comedy that wants to entertain while telling what dreams, and desires and aspirations lie beyond simple appearances, and also might make us think how superficial our everyday looks, or how our easy classifications can be shallow and meaningless.

Published author, Claudia Marinelli, has won several literary awards in Italy. Read more about her here.