Sweet Idleness | movie | 1999 | Official Featurette - video Dailymotion

This movie depicts the two years that young Stendhal spent in Italy. Stendhal, that time still known simply as Henri Bey | dG1fbkJvX1BIbUJuVE0

Transcript

00:00 Action! Use a slate people.

00:03 Hello there, my name is Michael Antonio Keane. I am a film director, writer and part-time actor.

00:09 Works of mine include Like a Bolt from the Blue, Covid Era and Dolce Farniente, my latest film,

00:16 which I'm so chuffed and proud to be presenting to you.

00:20 We follow Aidan, an Irish writer, who goes to Italy, unexposed to find himself.

00:25 And it's quite funny because I resonate with the project a lot in the sense that he's a creative,

00:32 he's an artist, but more so that he follows his heart.

00:35 He follows his intuition and if something feels wrong, he's not going to do it.

00:42 Yeah, we follow Aidan in his beautiful Italian lifestyle.

00:46 An Irish writer who leaves Ireland to go pursue an Italian lifestyle, an Italian dream, if you like.

00:52 He learns the language, he writes a book, he rediscovers love, but not in the form that you'd think.

01:01 It's more to do with finding love with himself and the wider world.

01:06 If you're at peace with yourself, you're at peace with anything else.

01:09 And that's something that I implemented in this film. It's sort of a metaphor.

01:14 He's marking chapters in his book, but ultimately it's his life.

01:18 And they reflect different segments and chapters within his life that he's gone through.

01:24 Difficult ones, mainly, but also the nice and pretty ones.

01:30 We filmed in Verona, Modena and Bologna.

01:35 And it was all principally shot in northern Italy.

01:39 But, you know, I think that Italy is just so beautiful.

01:43 You don't get the locations that you get there over here at all.

01:47 So I'm so chuffed to have been able to do that.

01:49 It's the book that he wrote in Italian.

01:52 We see that. We see him flicking through the chapters.

01:55 Things to watch out for when you're watching Dolce Fogliente.

01:59 Hmm.

02:00 Trying to figure that one out myself.

02:06 I would have to say, actually.

02:09 Flowers.

02:11 I'm not giving away too much, but flowers, you're going to like that.

02:16 I strongly look forward to people watching the film.

02:18 And I hope that they can connect with both Aidan and the term Dolce Fogliente.

02:23 Because it is quite, quite a simple yet beautiful that you can apply to life, I think.