First look images from upcoming U.K./Italian co-production “Commedia” have been released, Variety can exclusively reveal.
Actor and writer Greta Bellamacina, who will next be seen in Sky Atlantic’s “This Sceptred Isle,” plays the lead, Irene.
Helmed by Italian film and theater director Riccardo Vannuccini, “Commedia” will be Vannuccini’s first English-language film and is intended as an homage to renowned Italian filmmaker Marco Ferreri (“Storie di ordinaria follia,” “The House of Smiles”).
Set as a “film within a film,” Vannuccini also co-stars in the feature, playing a director called Rocco Cucovaz who unsuccessfully directs Bellamacina in a variety of scenes, each one descending into chaos until the female actors eventually take over the production.
The film will explore Rocco and Irene’s “intense relationship” starting in the mental institution where they meet and continuing as they dip in and out of madness and sanity, fantasy and reality.
Courtesy of Artestudio
“‘Commedia’ is a harsh comedy which examines the thin borderline between creativity and madness set against a city with a long cinematic history that is, for the first time in a long time, shot in a entirely new way,” reads the logline. “The two main characters are patients in a mental hospital who want to make a movie. It’s a touching exploration of where the borders of sanity and madness lie.
The film has been shooting in Rome and its suburbs, including the local beach resort Ostia, public housing estate Corviale and a variety of neighborhoods off the beaten track.
As well as “This Sceptred Isle,” in which Bellamacina will play Dominic Cummings’ Downing Street advisor Cleo Watson, the actor is also set to appear in Apple TV Plus’s “The Essex Serpent” alongside Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston and upcoming Jamie Adams comedy “Venice at Dawn,” featuring “House of the Dragon’s” Fabian Frankel.
Bellamacina is repped by Grace Cavanagh-Butler at Tavistock Wood.