Francesco and Marta are in bed. This marriage bed where there seems to be no more duty. Him in pajamas, she in a nightgown. He said, “So?” She replies, “So what?” Him: “Did you want to tell me something?” Her: “I don’t want it anymore.” Francesco is played by this great actor, Valerio Binasco directed by Nanni Moretti. Indeed, the famous Italian director leaves his camera aside for the first time and takes his first steps in the theater with Diari d’Amore. Under this generic title, two comedies (in surtitled original) by Natalia Ginzburg: Dialogo and Fragola e panna (dialogue and strawberry and whipped cream). Quoted above, the incipit of Dialogo sets the deleterious and sardonic tone of a couple drifting apart. The plot doesn’t matter. It’s all about the atmosphere which does not require spectacular staging but requires a good director of actors and for this we could count on the disenchanted humanity of Nanni Moretti.
Marta (magnificent Alessia Giuliani) admits to her husband Francesco that she is in love with… Francesco’s best friend. The disturbing strength of Natalia Ginzburg is that she substitutes indifference for jealousy. So when Francesco says to Marta: “Michele likes very beautiful women. I know it. Regarding women, it is very difficult. You’re not very beautiful. How it happened ? (…) You look bad. A mustard complexion. And you also have crooked legs,” the spectator laughs yellow. In this Dialogo, sentimentality has no right to the chapter. She will not have it either in the following comedy where the characters of Ginzburg highlighted by Moretti will take shape, there too, without warning.
Change of scenery for Fragola e panna. Bourgeois decor from the 1960s. The doorbell rings. Enter Barbara, a young woman (Arianna Pozzoli) who says she is the cousin of the owner of the house Cesare, lawyer and husband of Flaminia (Alessia Giuliani). Barbara is in fact Cesare’s mistress. She fled, leaving behind her violent husband and her young child. Needless to say, she’s a bit on edge, almost suicidal, doesn’t know where to sleep, and when she meets Flaminia, her situation will hardly improve. The atmosphere between the two women is lunar. Barbara recounts her relationship with Cesare in front of an impassive and detached Flaminia. Then arrives Flaminia’s sister, the beautiful Letizia (Giorgia Senesi). She offers Barbara accommodation in a convent. Flaminia, unlike her husband Cesare (Valerio Binasco) who has just entered the scene, expresses some slight remorse regarding Barbara’s situation. What will become of her? Whatever. We’re often moved for the wrong reasons, and that’s why these two bitter, grating comedies of stale marital love are remarkable.
Until Dec 7 at the TNP in Villeurbanne. Dec. 12 and 13 at the Châteauvallon Theater. From December 15 to 17 at La Criée in Marseille. January 25 and 26 at the Maison de la culture in Amiens. From June 6 to 16 at the Théâtre de l’Athénée, Paris 9th.