"When I caught up with Martin Eden during the pandemic, I liked it pretty well but didn't understand "what, exactly, is the value of [...] a eulogy for the Western European project's dissolution at this late date." Whoops! I don't know why I couldn't grasp why Pietro Marcello wanted to delve into fascism's allure for charismatic upstarts in 2019; I certainly get it now, so perhaps my positive response to his tepidly-received Duse is, in part, a delayed apology for spacing the first time round."
"Where Martin Eden gave Luca Marinelli a profile-boosting breakthrough role (to the extent that he's now literally playing Mussolini in a Joe Wright miniseries, which I guess is a logical if borderline self-parodic companion part-no more subtext!), here the lead is the mega-established Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, a big star playing a big star and hence given full permission to give an all-out performance often pitched at either a whisper or a bellow, with nothing in the middle."
The film reimagines Eleanora Duse through a gender-flipped Martin Eden framework, drawing raw thematic material from the real-life actress. The narrative traces Duse from the end of World War I into the early 1930s as bankruptcy forces the long-retired performer back into public life. The film treats historical specifics loosely while foregrounding capital-H History and the political currents that shape individual trajectories. Dialogue explicitly acknowledges the limits of charismatic figures against broader tides. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi portrays the lead with extremes of whispering and bellowing, delivering an awards‑clip‑friendly, highly theatrical performance.
Read at Filmmaker Magazine
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