European Films

Italian actress Margherita Buy (I giorni dell'abandono/Days of Abandonment, Manuale d'amore/Manual of Love) has made a career of playing women in marital crises and she is not about to stop. It was announced on Friday that she will play the wife to Antonio Albanese's husband in the new film from director Silvio Soldini (Agata e la tempesta/Agata and the Storm, Pane e tulipani/Bread and Tulips). The film's working title is Elsa, which is also the name of Buy's character. It will be the first time that Buy works with character actor Albanese, who recently charmed audiences with his turn as the "Apulian Forest Gump" in Pupi Avati's La seconda notte di nozze (The Second Wedding Night). He made his big screen debut in Soldini's Anima divisa in due (Soul Split in Two) in 1993.

Buy and Albanese play a cultured, well-off couple with a 20-year-old daughter who live in the coastal town of Genoa (also Soldini's hometown). Elsa has recently quit her job to pursue a lifelong dream: obtain a degree in art history. Things take a turn for the worse when Michele reveals he has was ousted from the company he helped to create and that their house has been put up for sale. The family situation quickly worsens and eventually the couple feel like the only right thing to do is to divorce. The ensuing loneliness is something that gives both some time to reevaluate what they had together.

The film was written by the director with screenwriters Doriana Leondeff (who co-wrote both Agata and Pane e tulipani); Francesco Piccolo (who worked on Agata and also co-wrote Nanni Moretti's Il caimano/The Caiman, which also starred Buy as a woman in marital crisis) and Federica Pontremoli (who worked with Piccolo on Il caimano). Principal photography is scheduled for a total of eight weeks, all on location in Genoa. Buy can next be seen in Ozpetek's Saturno contro with Stefano Accorsi (already her co-star in Ozpetek's Le fate ignoranti/His Secret Life), while Albanese will next grace the screenes in the sequel to the hit romantic comedy Manuale d'amore (Manual of Love) called Manuale d'amore - Capitoli successivi (Manual of Love - The Next Chapters).

(source: Cinecittà News; photo: Margherita Buy in Venice for I Giorni dell'abbandono, (c): Fabrizio Maltese for european-films.net, 2005)