There are compliments and there are compliments. For a tender Italian actress making her fat display debut, being in comparison to Giulietta Masina — best possible identified for her paintings in entrance of the digital camera of Federico Fellini (who additionally doubled up as her husband), maximum significantly L. a. Strada and Nights of Cabiria — it’s indubitably one of the vital higher ones to obtain.
Nevertheless it used to be this that, Rebecca Antonaci explains, led director Saverio Costanzo to solid her because the supremacy in his Venice-bowing drama Finally Dawn (Finalmente L’alba in Italian). “Saverio told me that I, in some way, reminded him of Messina,” the 18-year-old says, talking from Rome.
If Costanzo used to be in search of somebody who may seize Masina’s famend younger, wide-eyed innocence, he surely discovered it with this newcomer.
Eager within the mid Nineteen Fifties, within the yellowish life of the Italian capital’s ancient Cinecitta studio (and the length the place Masina used to be arguably at her height), In spite of everything Break of day follows Antonaci as Mimosa, a timid Italian youngster who’s swiftly leased as an too much on a swords and sandals epic, a kind of mixture of Cleopatra and Ben Hur, either one of that have been shot in Cinecitta. Having been noticed because the untouched plaything of the movie’s Elizabeth Taylor-like Hollywood superstar — performed via Lily James (pulling some superior scowls in the back of her kohl)— Mimosa is dragged right into a coming-of-age journey prepared over one chaotic, Fellini-esque evening along the movie’s tuxed-up heartthrob Joe Keery and kindly driver-meets-fixer Willem Dafoe.
“It was a magical experience — every character, every building around me, they created such a retro atmosphere,” notes Antonaci. “It was really easy for me to play Mimosa, because everything around me was so perfect.”
Mimosa — despite the fact that whose naive perceptible we see the wild evening of events, medication, dancing, sleaze, hook-ups, and, in as soon as example, an escaped lion resolve — is to begin with star-struck via the icons she’s all at once surrounded via. However in truth it wasn’t totally other for Antonaci. “it was actually very realistic for me,” she admits. “But they were very kind and generous. And it was a learning experience — I learned a lot from them and their professional approach.”
Together with her hobby for appearing launch as a kid — “I always found the power of becoming a character and telling stories irresistible,” she says — Antonaci started touchdown roles, her first skilled revel in being the cut film il Lato oscuo (The Twilight Aspect). “I was very young, maybe 10 or 11. And it was a hard part — a thriller with a lot of action and drama,” she remembers. Since that early get started, she’s seemed in different alternative cut movies, and — extra not too long ago —episodes of the TV layout Don Matteo and Luce dei tuoi occhi (Sunny of Your Perceptible).
However Antonaci says that In spite of everything Break of day — her largest function to day — is the primary venture that has opened her perceptible as much as the truth that her hobby may transform an untouched vocation. “I love being on set and playing characters, but with this I really had the first big opportunity to challenge myself, and I just fell in love with the whole world of cinema.” It’s a task that has additionally landed the actress her first travel to Venice.
No longer that appearing is her handiest hobby, Antonaci having this 12 months additionally revealed Morfina, her first copy of self-written songs. “I have to have music in my life — it’s like therapy for me,” she explains. Day there have been disagree alternatives for her sing in Ultimate Break of day (despite the fact that there’s one rousing scene the place she — silently — reduces a room to tears thru a word-less poem), there are hopes that at date tasks might permit her to mix track with appearing.
“Actually, songwriting has helped me with my acting career,” she says. “Because I had to explore my inner emotions.”
