Chiara Francini – Coppia aperta quasi spalancata
‘I wanted to tell with a real alphabet the fable and martyrdom of love when you are a couple or when there are many more of you’. Chiara Francini is enthusiast. Her first film as producer, writer and protagonist opens the Venice Days at the 81st Venice International Film Festival. Based on the play of the same name written by Franca Rame and staged with her husband Dario Fo, Coppia Aperta Quasi Spalancata is a docufilm directed by Federica Di Giacomo (Il Palazzo, 2022) that explores, between reality and fiction, the complex themes of polyamory and the search for happiness. For four years, Francini successfully staged the play, arousing a debate that involved the public with such passion that it prompted the actress to want to make a film of it with the production company she created, Nemesis, together with Ballandi in collaboration with Rai Cinema. ‘Franca Rame and Dario Fo were true geniuses,’ Francini tells Ciak,’ and this text will never die; it gives a fresco that speaks to the whole of society and tells a song everyone sings.
What is the film about?
‘It is the story of an actress, Chiara, who brings the piece by Dario Fo and Franca Rame on stage for four years with great success. The piece is the story of Antonia, a wife whose husband asks to open up the couple only to be able to do as he pleases. She suffers unspeakably but accepts because she thinks her life has no meaning without being someone’s wife. However, when Antonia begins to come to terms with herself and listen to herself, it is almost as if she is reborn. Of course, this sours the relationship with her husband, who thinks his wife is almost an object, always at home waiting for him. The film recounts what that almost wide-open couple is today, which since ’83 continues to provoke such heated debates; it is a sort of Dantean journey into the world of polyamory’.
What struck you about this play?
‘This extraordinary work analyses in a very profound and subtle way also and above all a female figure who at first succumbs, suffers from the feeling of feeling lacking, incomplete if one is not someone’s half, and despite accepting rules to be with the other continues to feel wrong and unhappy. But it also recounts the rebirth that comes with what, in my opinion, is the necessary rule to be happy, especially for a woman: listening to yourself, understanding your colours, knowing your merits and also your limits, because there in the middle lies the actual possibility of success and perhaps happiness.
How was it for you to approach a great figure like Franca Rame?
‘This is the first Italian audiovisual project on a text by Franca Rame. I am proud to play the character of Antonia, who was written and acted by her and closely related to her. In this film, I take her speech a little further. I don’t want to compare myself to Franca, but she is very much in line with who I am.
What does it mean for you to open Venice Days in Venice with one of your films?
‘It is perhaps one of the greatest joys of my life. It is my first film as a producer, and I made it like you make a child because it is made up of all the colours of my rainbow. In it, there is writing, theatre, and cinema, and I put in the truest thing I had, I put in Chiara Francini’.
