Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian producer and director Ginevra Elkann, whose delicate first feature “If Only” opened the 2019 Locarno fest garnering critical praise, is at the Toronto Film Festival with her tonally different follow-up, “I Told You So.” The movie features a group made up mostly of women who are having a mental meltdown amid an unprecedented January heat wave in Rome.
As the heat rises, so do the characters’ obsessions with sex, food, drugs, alcohol, and religion. The eclectic ensemble film, which was conceived by Elkann and her co-writers during the pandemic, features a star studded cast comprising Danny Huston – speaking perfect Italian on screen – as a heroin-addicted Italian-American priest.
Then there is Valeria Golino as a past-her-prime porn star named Pupa; Valeria Bruni Tedeschi as a psychopathic mother who happens to be obsessed with Pupa; and Alba Rohrwacher as an alcoholic artist who loses custody of her son to her heartbroken ex played by Riccardo Scamarcio.
Elkann spoke to Variety about finding humour in the emotional turmoils of these characters which reflect her own anxieties. In ‘Magari’ you were basically drawing from your childhood.
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