Follia
Drama, 2023, 84 min, France, Italy, Austria, China, in French and Italian with Eng. subtitles
Short Synopsis: Mark Volte, a successful, uncommunicative and neurotic Italian director in his 40s, is getting back to Sicily with his wife after a long absence. In the boat, a strange couple Nausica and Cyclope, provokes them with an aggressive and transgressive attitude. However, what first appeared as a stupid game becomes more than that for Mark and Nausica …
Cast: Stefano Cassetti, Manal Issa, Margaux Chatelier, Danil Vorobiev, Nicola Nocella, Anita Chui
Director: Charles Guerin Surville
Producers: Anita Chui, Charles Guerin Surville
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12223594
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERDLMBlBfnM
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Mark Volte, a native Italian and successful director in the 40s, looking uncommunicative and neurotic, is getting back to Sicily after a long absence. His wife Lucia is joining him. In the boat, a strange couple of delinquents, Nausica and Cyclope, provokes them with an agressive and transgressive attitude.
Antonio, Mark’s brother, is waiting for them with an old Lancia. He is driving them to the antique villa, below the Etna volcano. The family encounter is cold. Antonio, who loves nature and family, is blaming Mark for having left home so long without any explanation. The mother feels nostalgic and the father remains unconscious.
Strange situations are following. Jeanne, a young orphan, is appearing semi naked in the kitchen. Miss Lee, responsible for Beijing Film Festival, is arriving to the villa. Cyclope is fighting with Mark on the beach, threatening to kill him.
We discover another reality. Cyclope, whose real name is Keaton, is working on a film. While facing a couple crisis with his wife Nausica, he is proposing her to play a role of a delinquent, having a romance with Mark, a depressed and dark man. Nausica feels both interest and rejection.
After bringing his fragile father on the sea with his dog, Mark is fighting with his family. He gets drunk and wakes up next to a cemetery. On the road, he crosses by casualty Nausica the delinquent. After kissing and sleeping together on the beach, observed by Keaton, they marry on the top of the cold Etna volcano. But Cyclope is waiting for them at the villa. After killing the dog, Cyclope is shot by the father and Nausica gets killed by Cyclope.
We find Mark laying down unconscious and cold on a windy beach, like Ulysse. Nausica is next to him, unreal, may be dead. After stealing food and water in a grocery shop, Mark is found walking naked feet by Antonio, who is not his brother, but a Doctor. In fact, we meet again every characters evolving in a mental institution, standing in the antique villa. Nausica and Jeanne are nurses, the mother a patient and Miss Lee a representative for a health program. Keaton is even there. Is he a patient, a film maker, or Mark’s alter ego ?
While reproducing a trauma thanks to a cinese technology using Virtual Reality, Mark finally realizes that his wife, called Nausica like the nurse and the delinquent, disappeared in an accident while shooting his film. Mark will drive back to the dark rocks set where the scene took place, looking for her…