By Garry Maddox
It’s the Italian film that has sparked debate about domestic violence and the epidemic of men killing women in its home country. Despite being a period film shot in black and white, There’s Still Tomorrow was not just a box office hit, it sold more tickets in Italian cinemas than Barbie last year.
That surprised even Paola Cortellesi, a popular comic actor who co-wrote, directs and stars in the film.
“We are counting victims of femicide every 72 hours on average”: Paola Cortellesi at the Italian film awards in May.Credit: Getty Images
“At the end of the first week, my friends all over Italy sent me pictures of queues outside cinemas,” she says from Rome. “That’s something that hasn’t happened for years. It’s been bigger than I could ever imagine.”
That success reflects the humour and warm heart of a comic drama about a downtrodden woman, Delia (Cortellesi), living in Rome just after World War II, that was shot to look like black and white classics of Italian neorealism such as Rome Open City and Bicycle Thieves.
Married to abusive husband Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea), Delia works at menial part-time jobs while looking after her three ungrateful children and misogynist bedridden father-in-law. Rather than showing violence explicitly, Cortellesi uses humour: a scene where Ivano hits Delia, for example, is played as a stylish dance to a song about undying love.
The other reason the film has become a cultural phenomenon – overtaking Life Is Beautiful to become the fifth-biggest Italian film in that that country’s box office – is the urgency of its subject. In a country where a possessive ex-boyfriend’s alleged kidnapping and murder of 22-year-old student Giulia Cecchettin sparked protests about men killing women late last year – just as has happened around Australia – There’s Still Tomorrow has struck a chord.
Paola Cortellessi as Delia in There’s Still Tomorrow.Credit: Vision
“We are counting victims of femicide every 72 hours on average,” Cortellessi says. “Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, it’s a crazy man’, ‘It’s a psycho’. No, it’s not. It’s a problem of mentality. It’s tied to an old mentality that [equates] love with possession.”
Surprisingly, 45 per cent of the Italian audience has been male. “It’s not a film against men,” Cortellesi says. “Sometimes men feel guilty, even if they have no reason. The humour in the story is to allow men not to feel guilty.”
The inspiration for the film was the stories Cortellesi heard from her grandmother and great-grandmother, often told with wry humour. “They measured their lives as wives and as submissive women to the husband,” she says. “Their stories were about women … ‘You remember that one? The poor thing, she was beaten by her husband. Oh, I heard the screaming in the house’.”
Cortellessi, 50, did not necessarily want to star as well as make her directing debut.
Romana Maggiora Vergano as Delia’s teenage daughter, Marcella, in There’s Still Tomorrow. Credit: Vision
“I have my producers’ trust but to do a film in black and white, set in the past, is a little more expensive than a contemporary comedy,” she says. “I’ve made many well-known and successful films but when I showed them the subject for the first time, the producers were a little bit scared – ‘Why? You’re a comedian. Let’s do some comedies’, ‘This is about violence in the past and in black and white, nobody will go to see it’.
“But I was convinced it could be a popular film because of the humour. I was convinced but, for a long time, I was the only one convinced.”
Cortellessi says the film has encouraged audience members to reveal their emotional stories in Q&A sessions. “A man in Turin told me in front of hundreds of people in the cinema, ‘I used to be one of those kids. Our parents told us to go into [another] room, but we heard them fighting’. That was very moving,” she says.
“A woman told me, ‘I used to be Delia but no longer’. I’ve had the fortune to go to many places, from Sweden to South America, to Spain and France, and it’s always the same. People feel involved [recognising] physical violence and psychological violence ... You see the audience moved – getting emotional – about the same issues.”
Has the film changed anything in Italy?
“I would like that, but unfortunately not,” Cortellessi says. “A film cannot change things. But maybe some people felt allowed to speak about their lives and speak about women’s rights and the situation in Italy.”
She believes education is a key to reducing violence against women, which is why the film has been screened for tens of thousands of school students. “There needs to be education about this [issue] but every day, every week – not something that comes out only when there’s a murder.”
There’s Still Tomorrow is screening now at the Italian Film Festival in Sydney and Melbourne, and opens in cinemas on October 31.
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