Tribute to Ferzan Ozpetek by Laura Delli Colli
The kitchen in Ozpetek’s house is virtually the first room you come across on entering and it is dominated by a large, rough wooden table. This is where ideas, screenplays and friendships are born. This is where the daily ritual of a lunch or a dinner mixes work and friendship, cinema with reality, where every small part of everyday life naturally becomes part of a film plot, where even a simple plate of plain spaghetti seems destined to end up in Ferzan Ozpetek’s films.
I had realised this on seeing his films and it was confirmed when I carefully watched them again while writing his biography (“Ferzan Ozpetek - Eyes Wide Open”, published by Mondadori) about a year ago, when MoMa in New York decided to put on a one-man show of his work. It was further brought home to me when I interviewed him for the book. Sitting at the famous table. I noticed Ferzan was distracted, keeping one eye on the wonderful ginger-chicken with white rice cooking on the stove, as he talked to me about himself.
Yes, 1.30pm on a summer’s day in Ozpetek’s house paints the perfect image of our discussions about his life and film career: a snapshot combining life and cinema, like a scene out of Saturno contro, where questions, answers, and curiosities flowed, while we watched the pan on the stove out of the corner of our eye…
His actresses say enter one enters Ozpetek’s world - and his confidence - through his kitchen and that rough wooden table. And it’s just like that. His house has no secrets for those who have seen his films: it contains his history, his private world, his cinema. This is the very sink where Davide (Pierfrancesco Favino) drains the pasta in Saturno contro. Just as the table and the red chair are the same ones where Davide’s adored lover (Luca Argentero) collapses with a sudden brain haemorrhage. And in fact that chair is often left empty since the film was released, though the kitchen is always packed with people, especially when a project is underway. And so Ozpetek is today working on a screenplay with Ivan Cotroneo, just as he has written in the past with Gianni Romoli, the author of the “real” meatballs so adored by those around the table in Le fate ignoranti…
Ferzan Ozpetek, memory and life, his world and his friends, the scent of ginger wafting from the pan, and the sweet aroma of cakes from the famous bakery next door (which also produced the wonderful creations featured in La finestra di fronte). It is all just like in his films, even to point where secrets are revealed in the stolen moments between one scene and another. And I can reveal one or two things about the relationship between his cinema and food. First and foremost, Ferzan’s sets are different to the norm, in that the performers do actually eat while recording a scene. One of the director’s collaborators on the crew is a young woman who’s more of a chef or a creative cook than a stylist who has to prepare dishes to be looked at. She really does make the food they eat in the mealtime scenes around the table. The arancini fried rice balls in Saturno contro or the sandwiches in Mine vaganti (ah, how many were needed for the scene between Nicole Grimaudo and Riccardo Scamarcio…) and a whole host of dishes from Apulia, from starters to deserts. And of course Ciceri e tria takes pride of place, the pasta and chickpea dish with half the squares of pasta cooked with the chickpeas and the other half fried, in the traditional Lecce style, where Mine was filmed.
Yes, mealtimes are central to Ozpetek’s day, even on set: when filming in Lecce, there was none of the usual “packed lunch” traditionally given to the cast and crew, either in a full-blown version or the more plain selection, containing rice and cheese. No, they struck a deal with a small local restaurant for the whole crew to go and eat. Just like they would do at home.
