Drama film, by Valerio De Filippis, Italy, 2019.
The mirror and the rascal is an experimental film based on the tragedy "Richard III" by William Shakespeare. It tells the delirium of contemporary power in an author's reinterpretation of cinema, video art and music. The protagonist, Richard Duke of Gloucester, brother of King Edward IV, through a long series of crimes eliminates all the obstacles that stand between him and the throne of England.

Valerio de Filippis, a well-known painter who has been following his research path for a long time, investigating the relationship between light, corporeality and the psyche. The mirror and the rogue and the cinematographic equivalent of Valerio De Filippis' painting, his figurative style is in fact very recognizable looking at his paintings. But cinema is a new way where the artist can also be involved as an actor and performer, with an original mix between acting and singing. Staging the dark side of the human soul, the film is a surreal and disturbing interpretation of a great classic. The director says: "The first suggestion was musical: I was interested in transforming the text of Shakespeare's tragedy Richard III into notes. I love cinema and at a certain point I felt that the time had come to combine research on the image of painting to my love for cinema and music. When the film is finished I realize that I have remained faithful to painting: every frame of the film appears to me like a painting: the same light, the same colors, the same atmosphere ". The mirror and the rascal is a kind of psychoanalytic session that the painter does while hiding behind the mask of Richard III. Behind this ferocious and unscrupulous character we find a path of self-analysis by De Filippis, who is mainly interested in the more violent and turbid aspects. An experimental film in which, with great courage, the author gets involved completely, fragmenting the images in an unconventional montage, which is at the same time a flow of consciousness and spectacle.

LANGUAGE: English
SUBTITLES: Italian