Above all, let’s not allow ourselves to be taken in by the temptation to bring back at all costs the play directed by Lilo Baur to the film by Ettore Scola released in 1977, that would be a very unnecessary mistake. So, when we meet Antonietta, let’s forget Sophia Loren, goddess of the screen, and concentrate on Laetitia Casta, new interpreter of the exhausted mother, wrung out and deceived by Emanuele (Juan Bellviure), her fascist of husband. As soon as she appears on stage, the actress – girded by a neglected, disheveled dress, old slippers… -, yes as soon as she appears, the sad housewife, stripped of her natural splendor, shines through.
We are at the dawn of a very special day. This May 6, 1938, the Duce receives the Führer with great fanfare, and in the household, excitement is at its height. Antonietta may raise her voice, but the children, already little musketeers in brown shirts, continue to bicker. The family lives in a grayish apartment in a greenish state building. The decor is basic, like life under the Duce. The first scene takes place in the modest kitchen. A table, a chair, a stove, a window overlooking the courtyard, a tired lamp, a counterweight suspension, which descends from the ceiling.
Also read: Roschdy Zem: “Morality has no place in cinema”
Without saying a word, Antonietta prepares breakfast, polishes her husband’s boots, and gives a final stroke of the iron to a black shirt. She is the ordinary woman who achieves more than is given to everyday women: she is the wife at orders who has no time, oh no!, to dream. She is caged like Rosmunda, her mynah who never stops squawking “Atoneta! Atoneta! “. But it manages to fly away and lands on the window sill of the neighbor across the street. Starting point for the adventure, an ephemeral way out of the problem of living in a world as arid as this fascist world.
Laetitia Casta doesn’t force herself to touch us. She has natural clumsiness; his words attempt to express his dismay while camouflaging it. His life resembles this threaded stocking that shames him. Suddenly, the kitchen partitions turn on themselves and we are in Gabriele’s bare apartment. The radio presenter fired because of his homosexuality is played by Roschdy Zem. He knows his destiny: tonight, someone will come for him. He will be deported. When Antonietta rings the doorbell, Gabriele has the barrel of his gun to his head, he wants to get it over with. But sometimes life only depends on a ring of the bell, on a strange encounter caused by a mynah who, for a few minutes, thought he was a “carrier pigeon”. Roschdy Zem is a physical actor.
His raw body does not prevent a certain lightness and his smile does not hide his wounds. In his guise, Gabriele appears less melancholy than the character played by Marcello Mastroianni. We were waiting for two famous scenes: that of the concierge and that of the terrace. The concierge is played by the formidable Sandra Choquet. With her old shrew’s glasses, she swings at Gabriele, this strange “subversive” tenant. “(…) I don’t know who he is or who he is not… I only know that it’s a bad subject. In short, to be clear, he doesn’t like me and I don’t like him. » Gabriele is right to be wary of it like the plague.
Also read: Laetitia Casta: “As a teenager in my family, I didn’t go out through the door by turning the handle, I had to break it down”
The scene on the terrace is overwhelming, a fusion of two beings who are completely opposed. Antonietta/Casta lets her faded beauty blossom in the restrained arms of Gabriele/Zem. Lilo Baur depicts humans as such. In its simple splendor and its contradictions. She makes the bodies and the decor dance in a sad rumba with no tomorrow. We will remember the unfeigned sincerity of Laetitia Casta and Roschdy Zem and, of course, the simple words of Ettore Scola which tame the boasting of history always starting over.
A special day, at the Théâtre de l’Atelier, Paris (18th), until December 31. Such. : 01 46 06 49 24.
