Director, screenwriter, and writer from Milan, Carolina Cavalli returns to the Venice Film Festival with Il rapimento di Arabella (The Kidnapping of Arabella), her second feature film after Amanda, presented in Orizzonti Extra and praised by The Guardian as one of the best films of 2022. The new film weaves the surreal and the everyday through the story of Holly (Benedetta Porcaroli) and the young Arabella, exploring friendship, identity, and the pursuit of redemption in a tender and ironic road movie, featuring an international cast that also includes Chris Pine and Eva Robin’s.
How did the idea come about to tell the story of an encounter between a young woman searching for herself and a child on the run, and what interested you in exploring this “mirror” dynamic?
I liked the idea of returning to the theme of a friendship between two girls, but this time of different ages. Usually there’s a child who wants to grow up quickly; here, instead, there’s an adult who would like to become small again – a sort of older sister who doesn’t quite know where she’s headed. It’s a feeling I recognize in myself, in my relationships with younger generations and also with the older women I’ve known: their presence was important not because they had already found their path, but because they were still searching.
Holly and Arabella’s escape is also an inner journey. What narrative and visual choices helped you turn a road movie into a story of identity-seeking? How did you balance the surreal and the everyday in the film?
I completely understand the question, because I did try to plan for that balance, but in the end, I let go of the idea. The more I thought about it, even during the writing phase, the more it seemed the story risked becoming purely symbolic or metaphorical. But in the end, any story can be that way – you don’t need to force it. So I chose not to overthink it: it’s simply a plausible story, a car journey, a girl with a strong and unexpected desire – to go back and seize a missed opportunity – and a child with an initially childish goal, which is simply to run away from home with anyone who has a car.
Carolina Cavalli’s second feature is a dramedy telling the story of Holly (Benedetta Porcaroli), a 28-year-old misfit convinced that her life has taken the wrong turn. When she meets Arabella, a seven-year-old girl who has run away from home, Holly comes to believe she has f...
The cast mixes Italian actors such as Benedetta Porcaroli and Lucrezia Guglielmino with international names like Chris Pine and unconventional figures like Eva Robin’s. How did you put the cast together, and in what ways did the actors influence the tone and dynamics of the film?
I’m quite reluctant to change the tone, dynamics, or dialogue of a film after the casting. But I do believe there remains a huge space for actors to bring their own interpretation — perhaps the most important one — which is the journey from a character existing only in imagination to one that exists in the eyes of many. Making that passage credible is, for me, the most difficult challenge. That’s why you need outstanding actors, or people who are exactly right for each role: even if they don’t alter the preliminary choices, they certainly root them in reality. The cast is, in fact, very diverse, and that’s one of the most beautiful aspects of this work: families are created that seem casual, but share invisible bonds.
Shooting took place between Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. What role did these locations play in the visual and symbolic construction of the story?
Since the film is not set in an actual geographic location, the identity of its world begins as something free, but it ends up depending greatly on the real places where we shoot. Like all regions, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna are at times traditionally beautiful, but at other times very unexpected. In pre-production, when we visit a location, the production designer, the cinematographer, and I work together to create a believable world and a plausible map within it. That’s why these two regions are strongly present in the story and in its imagery, even if they may not be immediately recognizable.
Many viewers might expect a story of suspense or action from a title like “Kidnapping.” In that sense, the title seems like an ambiguous promise to the audience. Was that an intentional choice?
In reality, the kidnapping does happen, but it isn’t the central element of the story. I had already written the screenplay and naturally needed a title. In a museum I came across the introduction to an exhibition where the phrase “semantic kidnapping” appeared, which was completely unfamiliar to me. So I looked it up and easily found all these different ways of being kidnapped without it being physical: a loss of meaning, a removal from common sense, a forced shift of perspective, the absurd. It felt like a fitting reference. As for ambiguity, I didn’t want it to concern the genre of the film. But I do like the uncertainty over whether Arabella is the one kidnapped (objectively and legally, she is), or whether instead she is the one who kidnaps the other – by telling a big lie and playing with an adult’s hope.
