21° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
Out of Competition

Serva e padrona

Servant and Mistress

Country: Italy
Year: 2003
Duration: 93'


Three young women at home, the eye of the camera doesn't leave them for a moment and shows them first in a narrow kitchen, then in a small bathroom in front of a mirror, then in a bare living room where they spend part of the evening. The three are the mistress of the house and her servants, and the film is clearly based on Les Bonnes by Genet. The servants pretend to unite to varying degrees against their mistress, and she, in turn, pretends to be a mistress who doesn't give explicit orders but who makes herself admired anyway. Each one of them plays the part that is most congenial to her.

«This is a film-parable about class struggle, pitting the exploited against the exploiter (…). I wanted the number three to be the catalyst of it all and I wanted them to be women. I wanted hate and rivalry amongst them, but I also wanted desire and love, and that everything mix together and get turned upside-down» (T. De Bernardi).

Biography

film director

Tonino De Bernardi

(Chivasso, Turin, Italy, 1937) was an underground filmmaker from 1967 to 1983. He shot his first “official” feature in 1987: the film Elettra (based on Sophocles’ tragedy), produced by RAI3, involved the participation of non-professional actors from Casalborgone, where he worked as a middle school teacher until 1992. Viaggio a Sodoma (1988) was the co-winner, with Jean-Luc Godard’s film, of the World Wide Video Festival in Den Hag. He participated at the Venice Film Festival in competition with Appassionate (1999), and in Orizzonti with Médée miracle (2007), starring Isabelle Huppert. A restless filmmaker overflowing with projects, he makes at least a film a year. In 2018, together with his wife Mariella, he’s also protagonist of Teresa Villaverde’s O termómetro de Galileu, presented at TFF, in Onde section, just like many others films of De Bernardis'.

FILMOGRAFIA

Dei (1968-1969), Il quadrato (1971-1972), Il rapporto coniugal parentale (1973-1976), L’io e le aggregazioni (1977-1979), Donne (1980-1982), Viaggio a Sodoma (1988), Piccoli orrori (1994), Fiori del destino (1997), Appassionate (1999), Rosatigre (2000), La strada nel bosco (2001), Farelavita (2001), Lei (2002), Le cinéma dans tous ses états (ep. Terra, cm, 2002), Serva e padrona (2003), Latitudini (2003), Marlene de Sousa (2004), Passato presente (2005), Accoltellati (Accoltellatori) (2006), Médée miracle (2007), Pane/Piazza delle camelie (2008), Butterfly - L’attesa (2010), Ed è così. Circa. Più o meno (2011), Casa dolce casa (2012), Hotel de l’Univers (2013), Jour et nuit - Delle donne e degli uomini perduti (2014), Il sogno dell’India - Quarant’anni dopo (2015), Ifigenia in Aulide (2018), Resurrezione (2019), Ou n'etes vous? (mm, 2022), Universi circoscritti 2 (2022).

Cast

& Credits

Regia, soggetto, sceneggiatura, fotografia/Director, story, screenplay, director of photography: Tonino De Bernardi
Costumi/Costumes design: "The four actresses group"
Montaggio/Film editor: Pietro Lassandro
Musica/Music: Véronique Bouteille
Suono/Sound: Giuseppe D'Amato
Interpreti/Cast: Rossella Dassu, Sabrina Venezia, Eugenia Capizzano, Véronique Bouteille
Produttore/Producer: Mariella Navale
Produzione/Production: Lontane Province Film di Tonino De Bernardi
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