a film by Ferzan Ozpetek
2001 | 105 mins | Italy
Margherita Buy .... Antonia
Stefano Accorsi .... Michele
Serra Yilmaz .... Serra
Gabriel Garko .... Ernesto
Erica Blanc .... Veronica
Andrea Renzi .... Massimo
Rosaria De Cicco .... Luisella
Koray Candemir .... Emir
Lucrezia Valia .... Mara
Filippo Nigro .... Riccardo
Ivan Bacchi .... Luciano
Maurizio Romoli .... Angelo
Carmine Recano .... Israele
Luca Calvani .... Sandro
Edilberta Caviteno Bahia .... Nora
Ignorant Fairies
/ Le Fate Ignoranti
a captivating love triangle
with a gay twist
Screened in Great Britain as part of the
16th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
- 2002
Available on DVD as part of the
Parasol Pictures Releasing catalogue
www.parasolpictures.co.uk
AWARDS
Austin Gay & Lesbian Int'l Film Festival
2002 - Winner Best Feature
New York Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
2002 - Winner Best Feature
Flaiano Film Festival
2001 - Winner Best Director
- Ferzan Ozpetek
Best Film Score - Andrea Guerra
Italian National Syndicate
of Film Journalists
2001 - Winner Silver Ribbon for
Best Actor - Stefano Accorsi
Best Actress - Margherita Buy
Best Producer - Tilde Corsi
and Gianni Romoli
among many other
awards and nominations
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From the director of the highly accomplished tale of homosexual realisation that was
HAMAM: THE TURKISH BATH, comes this equally well-executed work of sexual discovery.
For Antonia would appear to have the perfect life. A rewarding career in medicine, a beautiful
lakeside villa on the outskirts of Rome and a loving husband in the form of Massimo. Only
upon his sudden death Antonia is set to discover that appearances can be deceptive, given
a copy of the painting LE FATE IGNORANTI contains a hidden dedication to "the seven years
we've spent together." Realising that the man she loved was leading a double life,
she sets out to confront the woman her husband equally shared his nights with,
only to discover that the third person is none other than a man.
At first shocked, Antonia's feelings soon turn to intrigue, as she yearns to know what her
husband saw in male lover Michele and in turn his close-knit group of gay, straight and
transgendered friends. Along the way, she finds herself embraced by Michele's family of
minorities, becoming close to them and inparticular to HIV positive Ernesto. Yet just
as she encourages Ernesto to 'start living again,' Antonia is inspired to more on,
only in ways that Michele, the group or even her mother did not see coming!
Co-written with Gianni Romoli, director Ferzan Ozpetek has once again created a multi-layered
work of homosexual love and discovery, aided by an invigorating score from Andrea Guerra and the
compelling work of Stefano Accorsi as Michele, Erica Blanc as Antonia's mother Veronica, Serra
Yilmaz as her namesake and Gabriel Garko as Ernesto. Yet the star of the show remains
Margherita Buy who gives a wonderfully moving, yet natural performance of a woman
coming to terms with both the unexpected demise of her husband and
the reality of his love for another man.
In depicting such, Ozpetek mixes his directorial palette with the negative emotions of loss,
animosity and deception, before adding the positives of attraction, love and friendship. That he
chose to include preparations for the World Pride 2000 festival in Rome as staged in the face of
major religious and political opposition, is admirable. And yet the celebration itself is seen
only as out-takes at the end of the film, making this feature play as a melodrama, devoid as
it is of a poignant comment on the event, but complete with one too many characters that
compete with each other for prominence, only for some to appear somewhat detached from the whole.
That said, Ozpetek has given the tried and tested 'husband cheating on wife' scenario a twist
and a gay one at that too, lacing his cinematic cocktail with the bitter enmity both parties
initially feel toward each other, before realising that they have more in common that just
their memories of Massimo. What is equally shared however, is the theme that this feature
has with its predecessor, namely that of discovery. It is one in which the outing of her
husbands' bisexuality allows Antonia to encounter a sexually diverse world far removed
from her middle class existence, in a work that is beautifully shot and told,
being a captivating love triangle and an assured piece of filmmaking.
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