Emilio M. Costa CCS is the cinematographer of Armony, the new feature film by Dario Albertini, which will have its world premiere in Piazza Grande at the 79th Locarno Film Festival.
Starring Valerio Mastandrea, alongside Aurora Cherchi, Clara Tramontano, Pamela Schettino, Nando Paone, Elena Lietti and Francesca Antonelli, with Asia Argento and a special appearance by Ornella Muti, Armony tells the story of a 55-year-old lorry driver who, following the mysterious disappearance of his sister, suddenly finds himself having to care for his six-year-old niece. An unconventional family forms around them, including his sister’s friends, an elderly transgender woman and a young neighbour who is expecting a child. When social services question whether the girl can remain in his care, the protagonist is forced to embark on a difficult legal process to obtain custody.
Director Dario Albertini co-wrote the screenplay with Simone Ranucci. Cinematography is by Emilio M. Costa CCS, editing by Chiara Vullo, music by Dario Albertini and Ivo Parlati, production design by Daniele Frabetti and costumes by Martina Merlino.
Armony is produced by The Apartment, a Fremantle company, and Damocle, with Rai Cinema and the participation of HBO Max and the Italian Ministry of Culture – a film produced and distributed with the support of the Fund for the Development of Investment in Cinema and Audiovisual Media. Italian distribution is handled by I Wonder Pictures, while international sales are managed by True Colours.
Emilio M. Costa told us:
‘What helped me find a stylistic key and the photographic mood for ARMONY was the central importance that director Dario Albertini placed on the concept of solitude, and on the freedom to explore the world alone that the protagonist has chosen for himself. The film then portrays those outlying provincial areas just beyond the big cities, where everything moves at an extreme pace and where you never go unnoticed — places where you encounter almost pagan forms of behaviour, landscapes reminiscent of Mario Giacomelli’s images, where even the sea conveys a sense of melancholy, somewhat as it does in Turner.
The locations described in the screenplay also reminded me of the provincial towns depicted by Gregory Crewdson, and above all by Luigi Ghirri, who more than anyone portrayed the Italian provinces as a kind of limbo: a flat light that makes even a sunny day feel melancholy. There was also a suspended, almost metaphysical quality, close to de Chirico — empty squares, motionless waiting. And then there were the Macchiaioli, who became a reference particularly in our approach to colour: their painting through tonal patches, drawn directly from life, almost gave us a method even before it gave us an aesthetic.’
‘Dario and I carried out a careful study, starting by stripping away all the conventional elements of what is considered “beautiful” cinematography today. We began by shooting on film and then moved on to old compact digital cameras, looking for a feeling that could convey this limbo-like world, where even sunlight has an apathetic quality — the same quality I find in Ghirri. We were interested in Vision3 500T film for the way it imprints the image onto the material itself; the compact digital cameras, on the other hand, for their flat images, with a distinctly late-1990s/early-2000s feel.’
‘From there, I chose Canon FD lenses paired with the ARRI ALEXA 35, which we used almost always at ISO 400 to alter its dynamic range while still retaining a more malleable colour space. Baselight allowed us to reconstruct the texture using Kodak data sheets as our starting point, in order to reproduce a certain “chemical reaction” digitally. And this is where the Macchiaioli method proved useful again: working with colourist Valerio Liberatore, we built a look that was not based on any form of emulation, but developed colour by colour, grade by grade — almost in patches, like a painting made directly from life.’
