Duse

Bringing the same intellectual and muscular energy to the historical biopic as he did with his momentous Jack London adaptation Martin Eden (NYFF57), Pietro Marcello depicts the late career of legendary Italian actress Eleonora Duse, incarnated by the wondrously expressive Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. The diva emerges vulnerable yet undeterred from the cataclysm of World War I, taking the stage again in her sixties despite a tubercular condition and a knotty relationship with her resentful daughter (Noémie Merlant), even as world politics and the aesthetics of theater itself are on the verge of changing forever. Epitomizing the full-bodied emotional materiality of his subject, Marcello goes beyond the formal and structural limitations of the biographical film, examining how acting itself can be a reflection of modernity and how performing brought Duse closer to becoming a radical political being. As always, Marcello brings both great flourish and historical realism to his work, incorporating mesmerizing early-20th-century archival color footage into this fictionalized portrait of the life of the artistic mind.