The latest story recounted in STORIA VERA has given birth to a region, to a generation of nostalgics, and to a veritable mythography. Achille Filipponi concludes the review with words stolen from the dreams and memories of those who still dream of the life and miracles of the Baia Degli Angeli, the first paradise to arise on the Riviera, the first non-stop disco music track.

 

or how Carla and Mauro plan to avoid any possible confrontation at least until the end of July)

Characters:

Carla: 55 years old, anthropology graduate, works in the communication department of a state museum.

Mauro: 63 years old, architecture graduate, co-founder of an architecture studio with three other partners that has gained prominence in the city of Milan.

 

SCENE 1

INTERIOR DAY, MILAN, 7:30 AM.

Carla and Mauro are still in bed. Carla is brooding, unable to keep quiet, and brings up a conversation about Mauro’s past and some of his promiscuities, a conversation that wasn’t concluded the previous evening. Mauro is tired but willing to talk because he senses that whatever he says could provoke Claudia, even early in the morning, and that doesn’t bother him. The weather outside doesn’t look promising, and the curtain filters a bluish light into the room. Carla and Mauro, still lying down, gaze at the ceiling and whisper in the dim light without looking at each other.

(CAR)

So? It was nice then.

(MAU)

It was fantastic. I fell in love with him, then with her. A very personal style, like authentic showmen.

(CAR)

Well, you know it’s because they’re Americans. They wanted to break away from the past, wanted to do something new.

(MAU)

I was lucky me, if there is one virtue I have, it is that of being a physiognomist. Everything could only be impressed...

 

SCENE 2

INTERIOR DAY, CAMOGLI, 4 PM.

Carla and Mauro are in their beach house, in the bathroom of the bedroom. Mauro is ready, he just got dressed and looks at himself in the mirror. Mauro is wearing a beige polo shirt and white shorts with a braided brown calfskin belt. Carla, on the other hand, has just taken a bath, she is completely naked and is peeing, she has long, wet hair and holds her head in her hands. Carla feels the need for Optalidon and absolutely doesn’t want to go to the group cocktail party. Carla thinks that even though it’s an aperitif, certain rules should still be respected and that it’s the little things that Mauro fails to notice that make a difference, even in the eyes of others.

(MAU)

Shall we go?

(CAR)

I’m ready. But you only go to the pool in a swimming costume.

 

SCENE 3

INTERIOR DAY, MILAN, 7 PM.

Carla and Mauro are in the large living room. Carla has taken off her shoes and is almost lying on the couch still wearing her suit. Carla looks out the window through the orchid plants. Carla is plagued by boredom and doesn’t know how to kill the long silences that are increasingly growing between her and Mauro. Mauro, on the other hand, is seated at the other end of the long sofa, legs crossed, dressed very elegantly. Mauro confides in Carla a memory of one of his ex-girlfriends, a high school anecdote. He shares it not so much to tell her, but to test her reaction, to discover what her judgment will be and how he can react to that judgement.

(MAU)

One day, long ago, she called me at six in the morning and said: come to Montichiari, I need to talk to you.

(CAR)

At that time, everyone was talking about you, I think it can be understood.

(MAU)

But I was still eighteen, you just need to take one of my diaries from those years... but I left them all in Cremona, with many painful memories.

 

SCENE 4

INTERIOR NIGHT, MILAN, 2 AM.

It’s night. It’s warm. Mauro is home alone because Carla went away with her friends for the weekend. Mauro and Carla haven’t spoken all day. Mauro, who had dozed off on the couch, suddenly wakes up in the middle of the night. Lately, Mauro has been sleeping poorly because his thoughts often turn to Gabriella, who lives nearby, and with whom he went for a walk in the surroundings the previous evening. Mauro often thinks about Gabriella, her firm legs, the way she pronounces his name, and he thinks that they have passed by so many times that now inviting her upstairs wouldn’t be something vulgar or unexpected. Now their neighbourhood is no longer Carla, Carla is the house, the neighbourhood is Gabriella.

(MAU)

All I have to do is open the window, and I see her....

 

SCENE 5

INTERIOR DAY, MILAN, 8 PM.

Carla is already home from work, and Mauro is running late. As she flips through a catalog from the museum where she works, Carla decides to make a phone call to Pietro, inviting him for a drink to celebrate Mauro’s birthday. Pietro is a wealthy collector in his fifties whom she met in a gallery. Carla is attracted to Pietro because she considers him more intelligent than Mauro and thinks that he does everything with less effort and hesitation. Pietro has absolutely understood Carla’s inclination, and lately, their conversations have become more subtle. As if each one always tries to say the most intelligent thing possible to the other.

(CAR)

We would be happy to celebrate in your company. On the evening of the 28th. You will be of-fered the most fragrant drinks.

(PIE)

Is it worth coming there? Because money, you know, still has a definite value. There are people, on the other hand, who just want to have fun, they get inspired as a group.

 

SCENE 6

INTERIOR DAY, MILAN, 7 PM.

Carla is at home, finishing preparations for Mauro’s party. Carla has done everything herself, and there’s no sign of Mauro, she walks busily in the living room, annoyed. Mauro is late and has just entered, but he stands on the threshold of the house with the door still open. He is restless and silent. With one hand, he holds the phone, and with the other, he bites his nails. Mauro looks closely at the screen, scratches his cheek in a specific spot that has now turned red. He touches his neck and stretches it as if doing an exercise for his cervical spine.

(CAR)

Finally, you’ve arrived.

(MAU)

[...]

(CAR)

You speak and he does not listen…

(MAU)

What can I say, it’s my party. I was sure I would receive hundreds of messages. Did I overdo it? Well, certainly, yes, I did overdo it.

SCENE 7

INTERIOR NIGHT, MILAN, 1:30 AM.

Carla can’t sleep. She gets up while Mauro sleeps next to her to get a glass of water in the kitchen and decides to take the risk of calling Pietro in the middle of the night. After just one ring, he immediately answers. The phone call flows clandestinely, calm, and perfect. For the first time, Pietro opens up to a true confidence, describing an old liaison with a woman whom, according to him, he should have married. Carla feels privileged to be able to hold such a secret but at the same time is terrified because she starts feeling too much like a friend.

(PIE)

Our life outside the family was in a huge villa, an impossible déjà vu. In many ways, it didn’t seem real.

(CAR)

Generally, one’s character can change a bit over the years, but not much. Then you know, in certain Catholic environments, they are so traditionalist.

(PIE)

The affair ended after about a year, by then we had become copies of the original, she was no longer the same.

(CAR)

You know, it is our desires: the glue of it all.

 

SCENE 8

INTERIOR DAY, MILAN, 7:30 AM.

Carla and Mauro have just woken up in their double bed. Carla and Mauro made love last night, they did so forgetting all the present that works silently and overwhelms them. Yester-day, Carla and Mauro forgot that everything is irreversible. Yesterday, Carla and Mauro un-expectedly felt good. Sunday passed quickly and ended abruptly like a car crashing into a wall. Carla looks at Mauro in the darkness, and Mauro remains motionless. Carla feels that perhaps she still needs him and that it’s not the time to throw away everything they have built, years and years of compromises that have formed an indefinite color, which Carla may not want to erase today because erasing it would mean erasing Car-la.

(CAR)

Memories resurface...

(MAU)

It’s just the day after the previous night.

(CAR)

You give me chills, so am I the only survivor of the two?

(MAU)

Let’s give ourselves some oxygen on this Monday.

 

The author did not write any of the proposed dialogues. The entire script is the result of a cut-up operation performed on pre-existing material from posts and comments in the Face-book groups “Baia degli angeli” and “Gli angeli della Baia.”

 

Vitone was a university classmate of Daniele Gasparinetti at DAMS, whose thesis was the design of a large “alternative” cultural center where the best of contemporary cultural expression could converge. It was Link, he imagined it and made it happen. That’s why Daniele is his King, even though it’s a collective... of course, of course. An indescribable figure, also coming from ancient worlds and capable at the same time of inhabiting the future with a naturalness that none of the cyberpunk “Shake” in Milan could ever dream of. Physical features that mix Friulian-hardcore peasant origins with the most extreme South American communities, with the same neck diadems worn together with the legendary grandmother’s pearls on the earlobes. Very slim himself, he oversees everything so that Link becomes what it is: a space for the dissemination of knowledge for all the senses where – if you could – you should come every evening and find something sensational. Daniele is with Silvia Fanti, the prickly and irritating curator of everything related to the performing arts here, with “premieres” that have circulated in all the international festivals, an incredible talent scout who has a special relationship with Romeo Castellucci and the Societas Raffaello Sanzio, a fragment of which can be seen these days: an audience of stuffed black rabbits watching an improbable show in a small theatre behind Piazza Maggiore. In short, all this to say that during this weekend of art in Bologna, what I have told you may also be cerebral, but then if you do as Vitone and go to Link, one way or another, in the end, you’ll get laid.