It’s easy to believe that a beloved Italian screenwriter’s first directorial venture will be a watchable, intriguing film featuring great performances and possessing nuances of noir as well as unpredictable turns. And in Rampoldi’s hands, that is exactly what ‘A Brief Affair’ turns out to be.
Two men are playing chess, then they disrobe at the next move and step into a boxing ring, and begin beating the living daylights out of each other. That is how Ludovica Rampoldi’s directorial debut feature begins, with familiar face Adriano Giannini as one of the men. Yes, he’s the son of that Giannini, hailing from a true Italian cinematic dynasty.
Probably the direct (or indirect) descendant of a game invented by English mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing which he called “round-the-house-chess” chessboxing exists and although first created as performance art, it has evolved into a competitive sport, complete with championships held around Europe, mainly.
But being great at a cerebral sport like chess, and then also agile enough to defeat someone at boxing in a ring does not mean you’re going to necessarily have the up on all your adversaries. In Rocco’s case, Giannini’s seismologist character in A Brief Affair, it’s quite the contrary, as it turns out. But no spoilers here, just a warning that not everything you’ll watch in this spellbinding film is necessarily what it first seems. Remember that, pack it in the back of your mind, and enjoy the ride.
As Rocco stops by a local bar after his match, in need of some ice to put on his bruises, he meets another soul in distress, Lea, a thirty-something woman played by Pilar Fogliati — an actress whose most recent work in her native Italy has seen her co-hosting the Sanremo music festival.
Valeria Golino and Adriano Giannini as Cecilia and Rocco in ‘A Brief Affair’
The duo don’t particularly hit it off, she’s too sad and drunk and he’s happily married but out of necessity, they end up sharing a kiss. Well, let me rephrase that. He walks her to her car, she’s forgotten where she parked it, and then he drives her home, she’s had three gin and tonics too many, and to thank him, we think, she leans in for a kiss.
In the hands of a less able writer, this would have turned into a kind of modern day reimagining of David Lean’s Brief Encounter, one of my favorite films ever, but one which doesn’t need to be replicated in any way, shape or form. However, we are here in the presence of cinema-writing royalty, as Rampoldi has been a co-writer on Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor, she has written for the series Gomorrah (based on Roberto Saviano’s book) and is now featured in another film at Cinema Made in Italy, as the screenwriter of Primavera directed by Damiano Michieletto, one of the best Italian films of the decade — soon to open in UK cinemas, thanks to Curzon.
Below is a trailer of A Brief Affair, albeit not one with English subtitles, I’m afraid. For that, the film will need to secure international distribution.
Thanks to her actors, which include Andrea Carpenzano as Lea’s TV actor partner Andrea (the duo also have a daughter) and the extraordinary Valeria Golino as Rocco’s wife Cecilia, a psychiatrist who likes to wind down by shooting at the local gun range, the film turns into something indescribable, a rare mixture of thriller with hints of noir but also possessing a lightheartedness of being. There are colonies of escaped ants, winding their way back to their terrarium in Rocco’s home, some elusive tomato juice needed for much craved Bloody Marys, chance encounters that aren’t so chance-y after all and a finale which made me go “oh!” out loud. That’s the brilliance of a film which could have been just about a “brief affair,” a man and a woman meeting surreptitiously in a hotel room, and instead turns into an affair to be remembered. For a very long time to come.
Don’t you love it when films color your consciousness and even begin to inhabit your dreams? That’s what happened to me after I watched Rampoldi’s gorgeously shot film and I tell you, I wouldn’t mind watching it again. So hurry up UK distributors, get on this cool film soon.
As an aside, I personally discovered the film (and many other gems I hadn’t found yet, mostly due to my ignorance) thanks to Cinema Made in Italy, which takes place every year in early March at London’s BFI Southbank and is a five day event organized by Cinecittà, the British Film Institute (BFI) with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute in London.
If you missed it this year, don’t let it pass you by again. Here’s a link to the Italian Cultural Institute website.