Liliana Cavani’s 90th birthday: “Time doesn’t exist for me but wrinkles do: if they find out I have too many of them by now, they won’t let me work”
The director and the set inspired by physicist Carlo Rovelli’s essay.
“On 12 January I will not celebrate anything”.
“But do we have to talk about it?” Liliana Cavani’s gentle voice becomes a little resentful. This 90-year-old thing does not sit well with her. On 12 January, the great lady of Italian cinema, appreciated everywhere for films such as ‘Portiere di notte’, ‘Francesco’, ‘I cannibali’ and ‘La pelle’, crosses an enviable milestone, in top form, with a new film in her pocket.
Is the age of peace not in your vocabulary?
“I prefer the age of work. I have been working for 70 years, those are the ones that have to be counted. And that’s already too many. Until last year no one cared about my years. Round numbers are insidious, everyone remembers them and reminds you of them”.
Don’t you think about it?
“Of course I do, I know very well that the deadline is near. I think about it so much that my new film is precisely about that, about time. The mysterious and elusive one of the new frontiers of physics, where past and future become confused. A time that shatters and no longer exists. And so, in this perspective, my 90 years are not really there”.
So how appropriate is “The Order of Time”, a title inspired by Carlo Rovelli’s essay, for you?
“We met at my house, talked at length. An essay is not a story, I wrote the story with Paolo Costella, Rovelli collaborated on the scientific part. And he also ended up in the film, played by Edoardo Leo, the protagonist of a choral story with really good actors such as Alessandro Gassman, Claudia Gerini, Ksenia Rappaport and a cameo by Angela Molina”.
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