Biblical tale provides the basis for a dark Mafia drama
CAIRO: The biblical story of Salome, the seductive stepdaughter of King Herod Antipas in the year 14 of the first century has been well known throughout the ages.
At that time, St. John the Baptist called Herod s marriage to Herodias adulterous after she divorced her first husband and married his brother. Herod swore to Salome that he d give her anything, even half his fortune, if she agreed to dance for him. She did, and then went to her mother who was exasperated by John s comments. When she came back to Herod, she asked for John s head.
The story has dominated numerous paintings and plays throughout the years. The most well known version of the story is the 1891 Oscar Wilde play in which he re-imagined the marginal biblical character and transformed her into a complex young woman full of desires and sexual affections for a man (John) who offers her nothing but rejection. Call Me Salome, the latest superb film adaptation of the play from Italian director Claudio Sestieri, brings the story to the modern Italian Mafia world.
Herod is now a Mafia boss who throws a party for his American business compatriots to celebrate a new partnership to take place in Vegas, while John (Giovanni in this film) is seen as a religious madman kidnapped years ago for an unpaid ransom and is revered by Herod who considers him a prophet and his good-luck token.
In the film s press conference, director Sestieri said that he didn t mind telling a story that s been adapted in more than 30 previous films. There are many stories that should be told again and again for their themes and ideas, he said. Salome is about the struggle between power and desire, kindness and seduction, men and women, he added.Sestieri explained to The Daily Star Egypt that he used the Wilde play as his main inspiration for the film and not the biblical story. Wilde s Salome is a timeless story with timeless characters that could translate anytime, anywhere, he said.
Call Me Salome is a dark film with a mystical atmosphere filled by a multitude of contradicting emotions and moral ambiguity.
The cast of the film excelled in interpreting the unusually iconic into believable, eccentric characters with conflicts that reveal the deep, basic and scary nature of humans.
Actress Caterina Vertova referred to her Erodiade (Herodias) as a monument of a woman, a woman who appears one-dimensional with a clear, fixed agenda but conceals in her sad face years of regrets, hate, sorrow and confusion.Yet it s actress Carolina Felline as Salome who steals the show. Felline frighteningly embodies every single ounce of Salome s voluptuousness and sexual passion for Giovanni. Salome is not merely a young misguided teenager, she s a young woman brought into a loveless, cruel corrupted world where she can t survive without her slyness and determination.
Her obsession with Giovanni is an unobtrusive scream to be loved by a man untouched by the rottenness of her world and the radical means she employs to achieve her objective only illustrates how desperate a young woman she is.As for Giovanni, Sestieri explained to The Daily Star Egypt that he represents the religious delirium, the silence of God. Giovanni is a lunatic whose views and loud appeals for the deaf to repent are not in touch with everything that s happening around him. In Europe, there s a separation between society and God and the character of Giovanni, in part, symbolizes that, Sestieri said to The Daily Star Egypt.
Sestieri s direction doesn t contain anything that s groundbreaking in terms of narration or camera angles but the former TV director knows how to create stunning images indeed.
Salome s infamous dance is choreographed, and shot, in a way that feels more sad than erotic while marking the final departure of the innocent girl she once was; and the final scene of the movie, where Salome famously kisses the decapitated head of Giovanni is shocking, haunting and revelatory.
Call Me Salome is one of the 18 films contending in the main international competition.
