La Pazza Gioia (Like Crazy) – ICFF17 Closing Film

La Pazza Gioia (Like Crazy)

ICFF Festival-goers are going to GO CRAZY for this award-winning Italian comedy of the year.

Nominated for 16 David Di Donatello Awards, and winning 5, we cannot wait to screen La Pazza Gioia at this year’s ICFF! Paolo Virzì, indisputably one of Italy’s top directors, created a “Thelma and Louise” all’Italiana with two of Italy’s finest actresses; Virzì’s wife Micaela Ramazzotti. Ramazzotti and co-star Valeria Bruni Tedeschi show off what they know how to do best, each in her own special way.

In La Pazza Gioia (Like Crazy), Bruni Tedeschi (who has perfected the role of the over-wound and unstable woman) plays the institutionalized Beatrice; Ramazzotti plays her roommate Donatella.
Valeria sticks with the personification we expect from her but has never done it with this amount of explosive authority. The character of “Beatrice” is the product of everyone working on the movie doing his or her job really well. Virzì and fellow scriptwriter (director) Francesca Archibugi nail the dialogue in a way that tops what either of these accomplished screenwriters have achieved to date.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi

In The Forefront, Micaela Ramazzotti

Ramazzotti, on the other hand, is the polar opposite of type-cast as the deeply depressed, tattooed and anorexic Donatella and any idea that she’s riding her husband’s coat tails has been long disproved. Her performance is award-winningly intense; she’s dug down so deep into herself to achieve this level of authentic bleakness that I can imagine it was impossible to completely crawl back out at the end of the work day.

Director of photography Vladan Radovic captures Beatrice’s true essence, the delicate flower /emotional train wreck that never stops moving, never stops buzzing, and couldn’t if she wanted to (and hence, the mental institution that is her home.)

Micaela Ramazzotti And Valeria Bruni Tedesch, La Pazza Gioia

“I fell in love right away with the film as soon as I read the script,” Radovic told us. “The cinematography follows characters and their constant mood changes throughout the film, but also through the scenes, and ultimately even in a single shot. There was one time that I invisibly changed the light during the shot because the character changed emotions while walking. I changed the light from warm to cold to follow his state of mind.”

He went on, “There are several scenes in the film where Paolo wanted to shoot in light that’s particularly special because it doesn’t last very long, for example, the scenes at sunrise and also the really long scene at sunset. For me it was a cool challenge and I planned my work to accommodate this requirement of direction that brought a special atmosphere to the film. We liked so many of the scenes we shot at dawn so much that we switched them with a lot of the daytime scenes and we did it knowing that we’d be facing practical problems for the implementation.”

To be clear, this is not a Thelma and Louise remake. The two mental hospital roommates break out and hit the road so yes, it’s #roadtripmovie and it’s #buddymovie and it’s #chickflick, but it’s so much more. Again, everyone who had something to do with this movie did a really good job, and the whole is much greater than sum of its parts. What a team! With Virzì’s brother Carlo Virzì creating the music for the film in the way that has changed Italian movie soundtracks forever, and cinematography from Radovic, perhaps the top DP in the business La Pazza Gioia is a clear “not-to-be-missed” highlight of this year’s Italian Contemporary Film Festival.

Guest Stars in attendance at the Closing in Toronto are Christian De Sica, Alan Barillaro, and more!

Watch La Pazza Gioia:

Micaela Ramazzotti and Valeria Bruni Tedesch, La Pazza Gioia