When Paola Cortellesi was little, her grandparents told her stories about the war and the post-war period. “My grandmother would sit with her neighbors in the patio of her house in Rome and there she would see many things happen, some hard and others fun, that’s how the tone of We’ll Always Have Tomorrow arose. I couldn’t approach a story of abuse from a humorous perspective, but I couldn’t limit myself to drama either. “I am incapable of dealing with a matter with a single tone,” explains the director and protagonist of Siempre nos que qué siempre, which hits Spanish theaters today, in an interview with La Vanguardia during her visit to the BCN Film Fest.
Cortellesi has a long career as an actress behind her. At 50 years old she also decided to get behind the camera to shoot this film that has become an unprecedented success in Italy and has already begun to attract the attention of other countries such as Argentina, France, Sweden and Germany.
The story told in black and white of Delia, a woman who lives in Rome in 1946 with an abusive husband, promises to be one of the films of the year because Cortellesi tells of the abuse with a delicacy that shows everything, but without teaching anything, and because Delia takes the blows (she has no other choice), but she is neither as stupid nor as submissive as her violent husband thinks she is. The director and protagonist balances drama and comedy equally and makes classic cinema something very modern with female empowerment as a background.
“Humor helps in everything and I have integrated it into the film without disrespecting anyone,” says the director who felt the need to tell this story because “in Italy there is still a lot of machismo, the mentality still exists among some men. that hitting your wife is normal and many episodes of abuse and psychological and physical violence translate into femicides: there is a murder every 72 hours.”
Delia’s family lives in a basement where there is barely any light. She does a thousand tasks to bring home some money, sews, gives injections at home… and keeps a few liras behind her husband’s back. She also takes care of her father-in-law, a disabled man who lives in bed and who gives her son some advice: “hit your wife just enough, don’t overdo it, that’s what I did with your mother.” . Meanwhile, Delia’s daughter wants to marry a wealthy young man, who Delia’s impoverished family welcomes with open arms. Until she begins to suspect that she too has a penchant for violence.
“Since 1946, the time in which the film takes place, many things have changed, but part of that mentality is still there and we don’t really know why, I am 50 years old and I am the last generation of those who had grandparents in the 40s. Children today no longer have living ancestors from that time and, yet, many twenty-somethings retain the idea that women can be mistreated. We even run the risk of this attitude also being instilled in young children, which is why I felt the need to tell this story,” adds Cortellesi.
The actress moved into filmmaking after a decade working as a screenwriter. She wrote the script for We’ll Always Have Tomorrow and “I didn’t want to leave it under someone else’s direction.” She has managed to move people: “This film has given me great satisfaction because I think it has touched people’s hearts. When the screenings are over, the audience stays in the cinema to comment on it and that is really wonderful,” concludes the director of what aims to become one of the films of the year.
