I eat your heart from Pippo Mazzapesa it is a raw and gory film; is a gangster movie as refined in photography as ruthless in script.
We are in no man’s land, in Puglia, in the heart of the Gargano but the sea is a foreign presence that we see in very few scenes. In fact, Mazzapesa shoots his film in a closed, immature, tight world, where the patriarch exercises the right of ownership over things, animals and people. Here the land is cultivated, sheep, cattle and pigs are raised and religion is not spirituality.
The photograph is devoid of color, a sign that things in this context are either white or black. There are no shades, there is only good and evil. And it is in evil that, thanks to this film, we make a journey, entering the deepest underworld where logics change and romantic love ends up taking on atypical characteristics because it feeds on possession, revenge, blood. Love, deprived of empathy, solidarity and all the values of the so-called high cerebral path, manifests itself with a mix of instinctive and wild sensations which, not being mediated by reason, will never turn into authentic feelings.
To watch I eat your heart we must undress of moralism and see reality through the eyes of the mafia. This is the only way to grasp the profound meaning of this film, because to really defeat the enemy, after all, one must also have the courage to look him in the eye.
Andrea Malatesta (Francesco Patané) is an anti-hero who is initiated, after the death of his father Michele, by none other than his mother (Lidia Vitale) – just like Gennaro Savastano from the cult series Gomorrah – to kill the murderers of his father, or the Camporeale, usurping their face. Andrea, even though he is the boss’s son, has never killed anyone. But he is called to take revenge.
The film opens in the 1960s when little Michele Malatesta (Tommaso Ragno) sees his family exterminated by the Camporealis. The image of the Madonna who is also usurped in her face introduces us to a mafia reality, in which public justice does not exist because the tribal law of Taglione prevails.
Time has passed. We are in 2004. Michele has taken his revenge and a little peace reigns between the two families. But Andrea, like Paris who falls in love with Elena, has set his sights on Marilena (Elodie) who is the wife of Santo Camporeale. An adulterous relationship was born between the two. Santo knows of adultery and asks for justice. With the interception of a third family, the Montanari (Michele Placido plays the boss in a commendable way), there should in theory be a kind of truce. But things will turn out differently.
I eat your heart is a powerful film (in the cast there is also Francesco Di Leva) which is inspired by real events using the tones and forms of Western tragedy and Greek mythology, the Iliad in primis, with obvious references to the gangster movie. The film is based on the investigative novel of the same name by Carlo Bonini and Giuliano Foschini (find the book here). The character of Marilena (excellent interpretation of Elodie) is inspired by Pink flowerthe first repentant woman of the so-called Faida del Gargano. Maria Ianniciello
