Obscurità

Obscurità - Taddei Paolo - Synopsis A photograph is on screen and shows a betting shop where a woman is sitting on a bench, two men fighting on the floor and a girl sitting at the betting cash desk. All characters are looking into the camera. A man wearing dark glasses starts to move inside the photograph as if it were a three-dimensional space with the help of a white stick. The man who observes all the characters is LUIGI(32), a photographer who will lose soon his sight. Luigi is ill, but he is strangely acting as if he were already a ‘blind man’. He lives with his old father REMIGIO (80) who had never accepted the choice of his son to become an artist. In a small provincial town, it's not nice to have a son like that. Remigio worries a lot about his son's behaviour. Luigi is not taking his medication and with a white stick and dark glasses spends lot of his time in a betting shop to take photographs, with a hidden camera, among the gamblers that go there daily. Luigi, who prints by himself his black and white photographs in his room, follows a last desperate task: to win the main European analogic competition. Among the desperate gamblers attending the agency there are: ANNAMARIA(40), a woman who lives with her mother and cashes her pension check to gamble, BRUNO(55), a man who dreams of buying an erotic doll, MAURO(40), a man blackmailed by his ex-wife who doesn’t allow him to see his son and CHIARA(27) an art student, with painting ambitions, working there as a cashier. All the characters use to go to a post office where GINA (50) works. Luigi goes there weekly to mail his photographs for competitions, Annamaria to get her mother's check, Bruno to save his money to buy the doll, Mauro to receive his mother's monthly parcel and Chiara to promote her art around the world. Gina is a gambling addict too; she bets on numbers. Remigio's attempt to re-establish a normal relationship with his son Luigi fails when Remigio tries to involve Luigi in solving the problem of the chapel where his wife Uliana, Luigi's mother, is buried. They haven't been paying the rent for a long time and Uliana's body will be soon moved to common graves. Luigi hopes to win the contest with 10.000,00 euro but Remigio has no trust in it. Luigi’s illness gets worse day after day. Luigi is obsessed by the idea that soon there’ll be one moment when his eyes will see something for the last time. Luigi goes every day to take photographs at the betting shop but one day Mauro discovers Luigi's camera and his fake blindness. Luigi is scared to death and leaves the betting shop. Chiara wants to know more about Luigi and becomes interested in his art. The two begin to meet and Luigi lies about his illness and tells her that it was only a trick to hide his camera better. Remigio tries to use Chiara to re-establish his relation with his son but one day he dies in his armchair. Luigi is alone, desperate, he feels guilty for not having solved his relation before his father's death and he is obsessed by the idea that soon there’ll be one moment when his eyes will see something for the last time. Chiara is really fascinated by Luigi and believes in him to the point of imitating him in his fake blindness. But soon Luigi's illness comes out and the innocent Chiara has to face it. One evening Mauro comes into the betting shop with a gun and attempts a robber while Luigi, from the outside observes the scene that appears to him out of focus. Some flashes flood the scene and the characters become frozen, all looking into the frames. Luigi takes his last photograph: Annamaria sits on the bench, Bruno and Mauro are on the floor, Chiara is at the cash desk. Luigi is definitely blind. The photograph is on screen and we keep observing it. Then five different stories of the evolution of the robbery start describing how all of the five characters take advantage of it. Luigi himself dreams of winning the contest with the gamblers' photographs and to pay the fee for his mother tomb. Annamaria dreams of a successful robbery by Mauro; she likes him and will benefit from his ingenuity. Bruno dreams that everyone will be shot to death in order to take the money to buy the erotic doll. Mauro dreams of succeeding in the robbery to live a simple life with his son. Chiara dreams of becoming a great artist to be celebrated with a personal exhibition. Each story, one after the other, begins from the same starting point of the white flashes of the photograph taken by Luigi. Luigi’s photograph is on screen again. It’s on Gina’s desk. Gina had signed on it a number below each character: Annamaria, thief, 79; Mauro, failure, 76; Bruno, lonely, 53; Chiara, artist, 81. Luigi, with dark glasses, comes into the photograph and becomes frozen. Gina signs a number below him: Luigi, blind, 44. Gina bets on these numbers. The daily winning numbers are published: 44, 53, 76, 79 and 82. Gina exults but then realizes that she doesn’t have 82 but 81. Luigi’s last photograph is on screen again. THE END