©Photo by Francesca Lucidi
Q: Along with all the historical research you’ve done and the archival materials you’ve seen, what was the psychological key to understanding how to play Luigi Comencini?
Fabrizio Gifuni: It was very important to observe and listen to him during that wonderful investigation called I bambini e noi, which he did in 1970, the only great material in which you can see him in action. From a physical point of view: through the look, the posture of the body, you can understand what it meant for Luigi Comencini to listen, to know how to listen. The Time It Takes is a film about relationships, and is deeply empathetic. The ability to listen is one of the foundations of our work: in both theater and cinema you don’t do anything alone. You can prepare, but then as in life it is always a team work.
What struck me about Luigi was this absolute ability to listen without any prejudice. Very often directors have a starting idea and want to follow that idea. The moment you want to follow that idea you no longer really listen to your interlocutor, but you hope that your interlocutor will follow what you already have in your head. Another thing I tried not to forget, and the director Francesca Comencini also told me this, we are still talking about a man of the 1900s, that is, a man as you would say, old-style. This authoritativeness of his, this being authoritative but not authoritarian. A deeply masculine presence. Even when a man has extraordinary qualities he still remains a human being with his own problems, he is a complex human being.
Q: How did you work with Francesca Comencini in order to develop the character of her father?
Fabrizio Gifuni: Francesca’s gaze helped me a lot, when she asked me to play Luigi she told me that as a person I communicated to her something close to that authoritativeness, so we had the possibility of not pretending this side of her father. I could see that in her gaze, day after day, she totally identified me with Luigi. She gave me complete confidence even on the set, often asking me almost for approval, as if she were asking it of Luigi himself. This is also part of Francesca’s character, in which I find myself deeply. We are both able to work on our frailties, I am not an “Alpha” actor and she is not an “Alpha woman”, which means accepting one’s limitations. In this film the theme of fragility, of failure, of the possibility of falling, of getting back up, are central.
Q: A great quality of the film is that the generation gap between father and daughter is also told through the different, almost antithetical body language of the two characters. How did you work with Romana Maggiora Vergano on this aspect?
Fabrizio Gifuni: Romana and I understood each other immediately, also on working on the different perception of the body, how she perceived my old age, the illness, and how I perceived her problem. We did readings with Francesca, we talked a lot, but once we did that we didn’t say anything more. I felt Romana’s emotionality deeply, she could channel it in the best way.
She felt I was a father. This is also a beautiful job that gives you the opportunity to work on your private life as well, everyone brings their own stories: me being a father, her being a daughter, all developed very organically, very naturally. Francesca observed us with great discretion and participation. One thing that surprised me about Francesca was this ability of hers to maintain lucidity on the set, shooting scenes that she lived with intensity and drama, in that she was really good at not letting herself get emotional. I think she was moved more than once on set, however she was also able to channel and direct these emotions because she cared so much about this film, it’s a bit of a film of her life.
©Photo by Francesca Lucidi
Q: Is this the most emotionally complex scene to shoot?
Fabrizio Gifuni: I found two scenes quite challenging. The one of course of the break-in in the bathroom, when he first discovers his daughter’s drug addiction: it starts first when he is alone in his study, he starts observing her entering the bathroom, he tries not to think, to chase away this thought by putting on a classical music record, rearranging the books, trying to stick to her mental order. Then comes the discovery, the sense of betrayal. A magnificent scene even on the level of the writing, because it starts with the admission of the daughter’s fragility and ends with the admission of the father’s fragility.
There ‘s something that develops first from the body, this father who already begins to manifest a physical fragility of his own, slips on the ground and with his body he puts himself on the level of his daughter. Luigi shows this ability to understand that at that moment the only way to help his daughter is to put his frailties out there and say: “I have felt like a failure all my life, even though I have made successful films.” The other emotionally powerful scene was when in Paris they climbed the staircase: Romana was really great because the times when she turned around and scolded me, I could understand that she did not accept her father’s illness. At that moment a person prostrated by drug addiction suddenly becomes stronger than her father, who because of Parkinson’s Disease can no longer walk. That moment when you see your parents becoming weaker than you is a devastating moment.
Q: Another strength of The Time It Takes film is that it tells a private story that nevertheless knows how to show universal themes. How did you manage to find this balancing act?
Fabrizio Gifuni: Francesca immediately managed to communicate to us this intention to tell not her story but a universal story, to make us understand that for her the bet would have been won if we had managed to tell the story of a father and a daughter, not Luigi and Francesca Comencini. We realized this the first time we opened the script where the characters were not called Luigi and Francesca, instead it just said Father and Daughter.
©Photo by Francesca Lucidi
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