Ferrante Casting Call in Naples Lets Children Dream, if for a Day
This content was originally published by JASON HOROWITZ on 18 May 2017 | 9:00 am.
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With only months before filming starts, the project’s producers — Lorenzo Mieli of Wildside and Domenico Procacci of Fandango — were eager to find the show’s stars.
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“Anxiety, yes. Desperation, not yet,” Mr. Procacci said (with a hint of desperation).
After her interview, and still a long way from a role in the production, Maria Rosaria bounded out, boasting: “I won the part. I’ll get on television.”
Her neighbor Enzo Valinotti — a 57-year-old shoemaker who reminisced about the days, nearly a century ago, when Totò, one of Italy’s most iconic actors, lived in the neighborhood — leaned out his ground-floor window and said of the children flooding the street, “They are all so happy.”
Not all of them, though.
A quick brush with show business reduced one boy to tears. “They didn’t interview me,” he whimpered as neighborhood women swooped in to console him.
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“Amore, amore,” they said, “they are going into all the schools of Naples. If they interviewed everyone it would take forever.”
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Some mothers appreciated that the audition got their children off the streets for an afternoon and gave them something to remember. Others dreamed big.
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“Look at my son. He is so beautiful,” said Anna Arrivolo, 43, who grabbed her child’s pudgy face and stroked his gelled hair. “He didn’t want to do it. I wanted him to.”
(“You know ‘Bellissima’?” Mr. Costanzo said, referring to Luchino Visconti’s classic film about a striving stage mother who does everything to get her daughter into the movies. “This is a bit like that.”)
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More time passed and more children auditioned. Under a sign that read “Beauty,” Marta had made it up into the stairwell, where she interrogated the other children walking down. “Oh, Francesco! What happened inside?” she asked a boy, who smiled and said, “Nothing, just an interview.”
Rumors spread (“They chose Benedetta!”) and none of them noticed when Mr. Costanzo’s girlfriend, the acclaimed Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher, walked past in a long yellow skirt.
A member of the production team declared, “Silenzio!” and then called the next 10 numbers up.
“Guys, good luck!” Marta shouted. Then she grabbed her friend Fabiana Colantonio, 9, looked up at the ceiling and implored, “Jesus, let them pick me.”
A few minutes later, the two girls lined up with the others, standing shoulder to shoulder, reminiscent of Lila and Lenù in the book. Mr. Costanza and Ms. Muccino again conferred in whispers.
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Ms. Muccino then walked over to the line and tapped Fabiana on the shoulder, but not Marta, who first looked confused, then swallowed hard.
At 6:30 in the evening, the production team called it quits. While he didn’t find any candidates for his female leads, Mr. Costanzo said he had seen some of the mournful eyes that he hoped would “build the soul” of the imaginary neighborhood he intended to create.
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As he, his crew and his girlfriend left the building and walked off the street, Fabiana Scasserra, 9, stood on the ground-floor porch opposite the center and watched them go. She had long, dark hair, wiry limbs and big, watchful eyes.
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The post Ferrante Casting Call in Naples Lets Children Dream, if for a Day appeared first on Art of Conversation.
