Marco Tullio Giordana (The Best of Youth) comes back to the Cannes Film Festival in order to present his new film, Mad Blood (Sanguepazzo). This film is about an episode during the Mussolini period through the destinies of two Italian fascist cinema actors: Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida. An anticonformist couple in public as in private life, they were part of the Salo Republic. Five days after the liberation, they got killed.

This story, which obsessed the Milanese director for many years, is built on the multiplication of the flashbacks during a period of ten years (from the meeting between Osvaldo and Luisa to their shooting). With an aesthetic like one could find in a TV movie that doesn’t innovate much on the formal side, Mad Blood is playing easily and systematically on the picture light’s duality between the past and the present (one is bright and warm, the other one is dark and cold).

With the glamorous Monica Bellucci (who is playing Luisa Ferida), Mad Blood is an historical fresco as Marco Tullio Giordana likes and which the audience who appreciated The Best of Youth few years ago will certainly love.

Mad Blood by Marco Tullio Giordana, official selection, special screenings

Aurélie