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Non ti muovere / Don't Move
Character: Italia
Year: 2004
Director: Sergio Castellitto
Screenwriter: Sergio Castellitto, Margaret Mazzantini
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: n/a
Other Cast: Sergio Castellitto, Claudia Gerini, Lina Bernardi
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A rainy day. When a car fails to stop at a red light, a fifteen-year old girl is thrown off her motorbike. The ambulance races towards a hospital - the same hospital where the girl's father works as a surgeon. Timoteo waits as his colleagues perform surgery on his only daughter. Trembling and distressed beyond containment, he calls his wife, Elsa to return from a trip to England.
He stares out the window. The sight of a strange woman, just sitting alone in the pouring rain, triggers a series of flashbacks. The longest and most haunting of these is a scorching summer of many years earlier in a squalid, semi-abandoned urban wasteland where he met a destitute young woman, Italia, with whom he had a powerful and visceral love affair.
Timoteo met Italia when his car broke down and she offered to let him use her phone. He is overwhelmed by her earthy sensuality, and whether it is the heat, the vodka, or a desire to flee the bourgeois comfort that defines his life, he gives in to his deepest instincts and takes Italia by force. Over time he visits her more and more frequently, and what begins as unquenchable lust, soon develops into genuine intimacy and passionate love for both of them.
In perhaps the most existentially drawn sexual drama since Last Tango in Paris, Don't Move is a grown-up, real life love story between two desperate people told from the point of view of a sensitive, angst-ridden male soul in mid-life crisis and a wretchedly poor and lonely woman who has never experienced real love in her life.
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Penélope Cruz about the movie "When I read Margaret's book, it broke my heart. I knew immediately that I wanted to play Italia. I wanted to give this woman the dignity she had in the book and that I thought she deserved to have in the film. I felt that I understood the character and why she was so self-destructive. It wasn't about justifying her behavior. It was just about understanding it - why some people lose all self-esteem and consider themselves to have zero centers in life. That woman doesn't think that love is something that is ever going to happen to her because she doesn't think she deserves it. I wanted to be her for a while. I believe somebody like that can have dignity. I wanted to give her that voice.
Italia is someone with a very special soul. She sees Timoteo's goodness. She knows that he is in a way very similar to her even though he is from a different social class. She knows that he's also damaged, and that he's also afraid of love in a very big way. Some people have that in common even if they never talk about it. Maybe they both know that it's not going to end up well, that relationship, but they are people who are that self-destructive. I wanted to understand all the layers of that behavior, and not judge it.
While Sergio's character recovers in this lifetime, Italia chooses death. At a point, she knows she's going to go down. She cannot take any more pain in one lifetime. She's been damaged by her father, and after that, she's numb to feelings. She doesn't even want to fall in love; she doesn't think she deserves it. Maybe she's numb so that she can protect herself from the world and from other people. All she has is the relationship with that dog that she's been raising. That's all she has as a family. So she's protected. Once she opens her heart again to somebody else, and it goes wrong, she can't take it anymore, and when she goes to have that abortion, she knows her life is going to end soon. Maybe, she doesn't even know intellectually. It's somewhere else in her. It's a sort of love suicide that she commits after that.
Italia is not somebody that thinks too much. She exists on another level. She understands everything. Maybe she wouldn't know how to put it into words, but she's a very wise character. Her intelligence is in a very pure state, and Timoteo recognizes that in her. That is what creates the violence in him because he is fcenterened by that aspect of her. It's a very powerful thing that she has, and he doesn't know how to deal with such purity.
Is she an angel? No, she's the forgiveness that he has to get from himself, and the memory of her teaches him that lesson. But he's the only one that can forgive himself. It's the only forgiveness that counts. Her reappearance forces him to confront the things that he did, and once he looks at things for what they were, then he can forgive himself. When he really takes responsibility for it. My interpretation of what Italia does for him, if she's an angel it's because the memory of this woman helps him understand that he has to take responsibility, and responsibility is different from guilt. Guilt doesn't make you any better as a person. Only confronting your past and taking responsibility can make you better, and that's her final gift to him.
My physical transformation into Italia was very important, and it had to be center because it is very specific in the book. The make up, everything is there for a reason. Italia is someone who doesn't go to the doctor, doesn't go to the dentist, doesn't have good nutrition. Everything had a reason. It wasn't about "Oh, let's make an actress ugly". It was to give the character the specificity that Margaret had described in the book. It told a lot about her fears, her low self-esteem, her vulgarity. Sometimes she's so vulgar, and sometimes she's a princess. She's a character with no age. Sometimes she's a woman, and sometimes she's a whore, and sometimes she's a little girl or a boy. And she's everything, this woman. So the exterior part of this character, we didn't want to be tricky, to put things that were too attractive, or too ugly in a gratuitous way. We didn't want to do that. Inside, I had to be emotionally naked, and with no ego. My ego wasn't allowed on that set for a second.
Working on this film was a fabulous experience. I love Sergio and I love Margaret. They are two of the most special people I've ever met in my life. And I just have a lot of respect for them … as people and as artists. I think Sergio is one of the best actors in the world today. He's amazing. And Margaret has written this book, which for me makes her a genius. Italia is the character that I love the most in my whole career until now."
"I talked to people about what happens in situations like that, how someone can chose the road to self-destruction because of having gone through so much pain, and that's what happens to this character. And she has no such thing; she has no hope for a better life. She doesn't think that she deserves it and that's what broke my heart about the character. I wanted to do this movie with my heart."
"I hope that a lot of people will see this movie in the US. I never talk like that. But with this, I really want people to go and see more foreign films. With this movie I feel so proud of it and so I don't feel bad when I say please go and see this movie because I know it's going to be two hours that are going to be worth it. For me, this movie changed my life."
"I found that what happened to me when I read Catcher in the Rye, I was in New York by myself, and I bought the book and I couldn't stop reading it. I felt that it opened a door to something and I felt the same way with this book. That only happens once in a while. You find some material that for some reason connects with you in a different way, and it happened with this book. I was on a plane and I couldn't stop crying. I was alone and so I had to hide myself behind the book. I was making a lot of noise. They were like, 'Are you okay?' And for me, when I find material that can make me feel so much, I feel so privileged that they thought of me for this."
"I've been lucky to play so many different roles. In the Italian movie Non ti muovere / Don't Move, I had to be totally deformed. People make a big deal out of that, saying 'How come you weren't scared?' And I said, 'Because that's how my character looks.'"
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