There was always a little mischief to be heard in “Le Pupille” as writer/director Alice Rohrwacher began assembling a group of young girls to fill a Catholic boarding school for a story set in her native Italy in the middle of World War II, but one thing no one would mess with was the original letter that inspired the film, a Christmas correspondence from acclaimed author Elsa Morante with literary critic Goffredo Fofi about a coveted cake that would require creativity on the part of the director, a part Morante would surely appreciate .
“For me, [Morante’s] a goddess,” Rohrwacher said after a recent screening of the short film at AFI Fest in Los Angeles. “So I respect her words and I thought the best way to respect words is to make a song because when you make a song you never change the words.”
It was just a challenge Rohrwacher would take on after issuing one from Alfonso Cuaron, who had set out to reach directors for a series of films over the holiday season for Disney. There were no mandates other than a connection to Christmas, but when the pitch immediately conjured up images of the pink confection that was at the heart of Morante’s letter in Rohrwacher’s head, a story set in 1943 began to open up, and the author/ Director hoped to work within the constraints of the time, make all visual effects as viable as in the era and build the story around the letter, which she set to music with the help of her friend Norina Liccardo and the children in her cast of The Finnish Experimental -Trio Cleaning Women.
 100vw, 310px” data-recalc-dims=”1″/>The The wondrous result is like opening gift after gift under the tree, as “Le Pupille” finds pleasure in a place where the fear of God is pervasive and takes the form of a Mother Superior (Alba Rohrwacher) who is inaccessible to the (considerable) charm of the girls she is supposed to look after, or the forthcoming “Buon Natale”. Although Rohrwacher always intended to celebrate the season in celebration, it doesn’t take a long leap to reconcile the iron rule of the Mother Superior with that of Benito Mussolini, who lost the country’s trust after joining Nazi Germany in the war, but was nonetheless recognized as its leader by Hitler and others after being kicked out as prime minister the winter Le Pupille is set. The director uses this backdrop cleverly when the nation’s military fails Efforts began to show that the wives and mothers of soldiers on the battlefield came to school believing that the prayers of Catholic schoolgirls could help their loved ones get home safely to find.</p>
<p>“I think maybe we have a stereotype about the past and to break that it’s always very important to see from a different perspective [where] When we look to the past, we try to remove that cliché from it,” Rohrwacher said with the help of a translator. “It’s the very cliché that fools people and makes the past come back. For example, if we could describe well the pain felt during the fascist period, perhaps more deeply, then we would understand fascism better.”</p>
<p>However, rather than making a film explicitly about the insidiousness of evil, Rohrwacher spreads joy watching a group of girls enjoying their freedom when left to their own devices, with the story finally focusing on Serafina, one of the youngest in the class who resists defying the Mother Superior in contrast to others in the flock, even when her commands become contradictory.</p>
<p>“I really wanted to make a film about a girl who’s so good it gets bad,” said Rohrwacher, who didn’t know who she was going to cast as the supremely suave, pre-adolescent protagonist until she brought a cast of amateur actresses to the set as her Ensemble, just before shooting decide who’s playing who. Ultimately, Melissa Falasconi would emerge as Serafina in the workshops she held with first-time actors when she “brought some transparency into [her] Eyes that can reflect anything [she] and somehow also a reflection of who we are.”</p>
<p>“I’m always looking for girls who don’t want to be actresses later. Just make a film – with me,” Rohrwacher laughed just so convincingly that one might think she wasn’t joking. “I explained to them that it’s very important to do a film only once, not just because you become an actress, but because you look at films in a different way, so it’s a very nice experience for them. And I think when we’re working, the film isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing about our work is that we share the fact of our lives and the fact that this is an important time for the children. you will remember [so] it must be a good time and that they become friends. I think if you work like that, the film can also be good.”</p>
<p>Rohrwacher says she knew there was real talent in her midst when the film called for the nuns to wash all students’ mouths with soap, and complied with disgusted “Yeechs,” even though the white matter on the set was actually chocolate was. She also knew she could bring in a wrestler to play the imposing Mother Superior by calling on her longtime collaborator – and blood relative – Alba Rohrwacher, who wouldn’t take it personally to be seen as the Heavy.</p>
<p>“That’s because you’re not her sister,” Rohrwacher said with a sly smile when asked if she meant to imply anything by asking Alba to play the play’s ostensible villain, although the nuance was that her sister can always count on to bring as an actress who actually made it. “[The Mother Superior] was quite vicious but very sophisticated in the way she expressed herself and for those who don’t understand Italian you may have noticed that her pronunciation is very accurate, very precise and that takes us back to another time, used differently in the language. In the end, it’s not like she’s an evil or mean person. She actually has the fate of these children in her hands, so she’s very productive. She thinks about what is right and she thinks in practical terms.”</p>
<p>Such a considerate twist was necessary as Rohrwacher balanced the tone of a tale so sociable yet so subtly refined in its evocation of a tragic period in Italy’s past, although “Le Pupille” was always intended primarily as entertainment, despite the celebratory mood During the season, the director couldn’t overlook their religious underpinnings.</p>
<p>“The film that Alfonso asked me to do was about Christmas, so of course it has to be related to religion because Christmas is a religious festival, so it wasn’t possible to do something for another cause,” Rohrwacher said and returned to the milieu of her feature film debut “Corpo Celeste” staged, if not the time. “I’m not in any religion, but I come from a country where religion has very great political power but also very great spiritual power, and I’ve always found myself at odds with those two religious energies — the political and the spiritual. On the one hand I can’t really accept what the Catholic Church has done, but on the other hand I love that people believe and that’s why you can see that contrast in all my films and that’s something very Important.”</p>
<p>If anything, “La Pupille” reinforced Rohrwacher’s own longstanding belief in how art can bring a community together, and created a particularly jubilant atmosphere for the production when filming was only called after it was deemed safe to film, given the Spread of COVID slowed. Filming in and around her village and inviting locals to take part in the production, the director was thrilled that her first major studio project had the same regional roots as any of her films before it and realized that she was celebrating the day of Luciano Vergaro, a gravestone maker in the area when she offered him a piece of cinematic immortality and the role of a chimney sweep who tried in vain to collect money from the matron.</p>
<p>“He’s a very special person and when I asked him about it, I said, ‘So you can imagine that you’re Disney’s new chimney sweep. After the one we all know, it’s you,” Rohrwacher joked about securing Vergaro’s spot alongside “Mary Poppins” Dick Van Dyke at the Magic Kingdom. “When we were making this little film during the COVID period, it was very nice to spend time with people we love and who are very close to us. Everything was so difficult for all of us that I tried calling my friends and neighbors to work with them.”</p>
<p>“Le Pupille” will stream on Disney+ on December 16th.</p>
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