Guadagnino turns Valentino’s haute couture into a short movie

Guadagnino turns Valentino’s haute couture into a short movie

With the aim “to use a collection of haute couture as if it were a literary text”, as he explained it, director Luca Guadagnino collaborated with Valentino’s creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli to make a short movie that blends the aesthetics of cinema and haute couture.

The 35-minute still untitled work is an art film in which haute couture becomes part of the narrative portraying different chapters in a woman’s life through her relationship with her mother. Julianne Moore interprets the main character Francesca, an Italian-American writer who lives in New York and who has to return to Rome to her elderly mother, a painter interpreted in different moments of the movie by Marthe Keller (The Romanoffs) and Mia Goth (Suspiria). All male characters are played by Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks).

Piccioli, who designed the costumes and lent a hand in the creative process, said that “every dress is a different story” based on its connection with the tailor. Indeed, screenwriter Michael Mitnik said that “There are multiple narratives that are told simultaneously,” adding that when Francesca returns to his childhood home in Rome, the storyline goes in and out various individual stories that took place during the course of their entire relationship.

In addition to a cast of great stars, the short movie – produced by Rai Cinema, Valentino, Ibla Film, and Guadagnino’s Frenesy Film – boasts a soundtrack composed by Oscar winner Ryuichi Sakamoto and a screenplay by Michael Mitnik. “The ambition is to show it at an important film festival,” said the director of Call Me by Your Name and Suspiria, “with the hope that in some countries it will end up in cinemas.”

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