FRANCE – 2000 – DCP – color – 100’

Direction: Gabriele Salvatores
Screenplay: Gabriele Salvatore stratta dal romanzo omonimo di Domenico Starnone
Cinematography: Italo Petriccione
Editing: Massimo Fiocchi
Set design: Rita Rabassini
Music: Eraldo Bernocchi, Teho Teardo, Federico de’ Robertis
Costumes: Patrizia Chericoni, Florence Emir
Cast: Sergio Rubini (Antonio), Fabrizio Bentivoglio (uncle Nino), Anouk Grinberg (mother),Tom Novembre (Micco), Anita Caprioli (Mara), Paolo Villaggio (Cagnano), Barbara Cupisti (doctor Calandra’s secretary), Olimpia Di Maio (doctor Cagnano’s mother), Ruggero Dondi (doctor Calandra), Angela Goodwin (Ciuta), Claudio Ammendola (young Antonio), Lucia Migliucci (Fiorenza), Elisabetta Pellini (doctor De Rosa’s assistant), Angelica Russo (the siren), Emilio Toscano (astrologer), Riccardo Zinna (doctor Lotto), Franco Trevisi (Beluga), Antonella Stefanucci (doctor Lotto’s nurse), Alice Pepe (Michela), Luca Pollini (son), Massimo De Lorenzo (father)
Producers: Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Maurizio Tottit
Production: Cecchi Gori Group,Colorado Film

SINOPSYS

Antonio has always had problems with his front teeth: too big, impossible to hide, a continual source of worry and shame. His life changes when his lover Mara, for whom he has left his wife and his two children, breaks his teeth with an ashtray during an out burstof jealousy. Antonio is sure, in fact, that Mara is cheating on him with a dentist. Wandering from a dentist to another to have his lostteeth replaced, Antonio, due to pain killers and his altered psychological condition, increasingly delves into a sort of time travel where fantasy and reality blend together.

CRITICAL NOTE
“In a style that is also a whirlwind of images and sounds, the author of Mediterraneoflirts here with the fantastic, the grotesque,mixing old architectures with new technologies. The result intrigues and has the merit of ambition, an original cast (Sergio Rubini,Anouk Grinberg, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Tom Novembre, Paolo Villaggio) that doesn’t hurt at all.” (Norbert Creutz,Le Temps, 4 Sept2000)“(…) Salvatores should be acknowledged for his courage in experimenting, trying new paths, transplanting small Italian stories intoa much bigger visionary frame.” (Irene Bignardi,la Repubblica, 3 September 2000)

AWARDS
2000 Mostra di Venezia – Competition: Future Film Festival Digital Award – Special Mention
2002 Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema: Best Actor, Youth Jury Award