for best director and Taylor Russell for best young actor – there was a sense that the Lido laurel had been a long time coming for the Italian director.
Born in Palermo, Sicily, to an Algerian mother and a Sicilian father, Guadagnino grew up in Ethiopia and in the Sicilian capital before moving to Rome where his filmmaking training consisted of what he calls “the Rainer Fassbinder film school: watching three movies a day and devouring books about film.”
There was just one exception: the late great Bernardo Bertolucci, with whom Guadagnino struck up a close friendship. “A Bigger Splash,” Guadagnino’s 2015 sunshine, sex, food and rock-n-roll-filled remake of French thriller “La piscine,” starred Swinton and Ralph Fiennes, but was booed by a clutch of Italians at the Venice press screening, due to what was perceived as its offensive portrayal of a Sicilian cop.
“Even the [Italian] critics who hated his previous films had to relent and bow to the potency and creative innovation of this film,” says Barbera. Last week, the crowds were so frenzied in Milan, where “Bones” had its Italian launch, that a red carpet with Chalamet and Russell had to be shut down. But he did share some cinematic cues with Chalamet and Russell. Guadagnino asked the young actors to watch Agnes Varda’s classic “Vagabond,” about a young female drifter; Chantal Akerman’s character study “Jeanne Dielman”; and Robert Bresson’s jailbreak film “A Man Escapes”: “All movies where you can see doom present on the screen and in some way enveloping the characters,” says Guadagnino.
“We were this bunch of Italians going to play in the big leagues in Hollywood with this film entirely financed in Italy,” says Melzi.