PRODUCTION

NIGHTSWIM / ASCENT FILM

DISTRIBUTION

NIGHTSWIM / ASCENT FILM
 

INTERNATIONAL SALES

TRUE COLOURS

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PRODUCED BY

Ines Vasiljević, Stefano Sardo, Andrea Paris, Matteo Rovere

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GENRE 
Romantic comedy
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RUNNING TIME

110 min

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COUNTRY 
Italy

WITH OR WITHOUT YOU

Stefano Sardo

SYNOPSIS

ommaso (Guido Caprino) and Alice (Elena Radonicich) have been a couple for fifteen years - unmarried and without children, he a musician, she an actress - both without success. They live in Rome, where they had bought a house thanks to a mortgage, which in the history of their entire relationship had been the one and only true acceptance of a responsibility. When friends are invited to a dinner at their house, for "an important announcement," they all figure it will be about the couple's imminent marriage. Instead, Tommaso and Alice inform them that they have decided to separate: but they want to do so in a gradual way, without  breaking up and while remaining friends - as would only be natural. This ambition - legitimate as it is ingenious - ends up clashing with a main principle of reality: stories end because the people involved change. And no change is or can be painless. 

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DIRECTOR'S NOTE
There is one aspect of our national cinema that has always frustrated me as a viewer: namely, I hardly ever recognizing myself in the characters that are portrayed. Only rarely do I see my social habitat depicted with its cultural references and linguistic tics. Not that I need to mirror myself precisely in the characters, of course: it's just that they don't resemble anyone I know. Whereas instead, there are often glimpses in certain examples of French Cinema or certain American "Mumblecore" comedies, that actually and factually portray life - with all its deformities, mixes of unpleasantries and flashes of savage irony and sweetness, and instances of elegance and awkwardness - with far greater verisimilitude, one that is not at all consolatory or shallow: but shamelessly blunt and specific. And such specificity removes barriers to the public's suspension of disbelief and by consequence, creates a strong reaction of empathy - at least that is how it works on me. In the direction of "A Relationship," I tried to push in that direction. Set designs, costumes, makeup, and above all in the acting: it all had to be credible, but without adhering to a careless and colorless realism. The fine chemistry and moving interpretations of Guido Caprino and Elena Radonicich, my two protagonists, allowed me to tell the story of a great love, even if only its denouement is actually recounted. The whole cast was generous and attentive: one has the impression that one could really meet all those persons in the Rome of the 2020s - or at least that is my ardent hope.