Texas

Colour, 35 mm
Italy, 2005, 110 min
Section: Focus on New Italian Directors

Synopsis

A Saturday night get-together for a group of friends, men and women around the age of thirty, takes a dramatic and perilous turn. The party images, however, are suddenly interrupted by reminiscences of two other celebrations, where various problems arose, became more convoluted, and now threaten to bring about multiple tragedies. The director proves a master of narration, bringing us into the friends’ regular world, where the atmosphere is dictated by whim and mood, whether it’s a sense of ease or convulsion, boredom or amusement, idle chit-chat and showing off or, on the contrary, profoundly truthful insight and flashes of honesty. Thanks to his sense of psychological detail and his inventive use of film language, we are presented with an imaginative, dynamic mosaic of a dozen portraits of a small community and, in fact, an entire provincial town. In both the environment and its inhabitants we observe the disappearing traces of traditional rural life which has to give way to the aggressively vivid and staunchly rousing tempo of the industrial metropolis.

About the director

Fausto Paravidino (b. 1976, Genoa, Italy) studied acting at the college affiliated to the Teatro Stabile in Genoa. This theatre became his home ground where he has appeared in a number of productions, many of which he also directed, including those for which he wrote the original stage play. As a director and actor he has worked in television, radio and film, and was also cast in films by Pupi Avati and Massimo Costa. He made several short films before debuting with his zesty, perceptive and resourceful feature film Texas.