The 61st Annual Chicago International Film Festival brought The Holy Boy to the Windy City. The film centers on the happiest town in Italy and its secret ritual to eradicate its pain. During the festival, Adam Patla sat down with director and writer Paolo Strippoli to discuss the film’s dark themes, crafting a unique location, and the visual language of the film.
Portions of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.
Adam: I know you started writing [Holy Boy] in 2017, but it feels aggressively in conversation with the current cultural climate. How did it evolve for you from when you first put pen to paper to now, if at all?
Paolo: It changed a lot. Also, because it talks about teenagers and teenagers changed from 2017 to today. Lorenzo (Diego Nardini), the school bully, used, in the first draft, a hoverboard, which was a thing in 2017. Nobody uses hoverboards anymore. I think it changed a lot, but not really at the core of the story.
Thank you for saying it’s in conversation with today’s world. But I think today’s world, from what we’re telling in the story, didn’t change much. It probably got worse in a way. We couldn’t express our feelings back then. We cannot now. I think COVID made it even worse. It changed more after COVID than before. I don’t have this great hope for humanity. I think it became more bitter in a way, more serious in a way. Probably, it was a more playful horror before COVID. I myself felt the whole pandemic moment changed my perception of humanity for the worse, and that’s probably reflected in the film. It became way more serious than it was.
Adam: In the film, these people need to hug Matteo (Giulio Feltri) in order to relinquish their pain. I find the fact that it’s a hug so fascinating because a hug can be something for comfort or a line crossed. I was wondering if you could talk about playing around with that dynamic.
Paolo: It was important that it was a hug given to Matteo, not a hug given by Matteo, because in this way, he is not an active part of the ritual. He’s just a used tool. The concept of abuse in this film is really important because what we see is this boy abusing others, getting into their heads, into their bodies, moving through their bodies, and doing things through their bodies.
Also, abusing in a more direct way when we talk about Lorenzo, because there’s sexual abuse in a way. But it was important to me to let people see that he abuses others because he is abused. I don’t think people get to things because they’re good or bad. I think Matteo is desperate, and this is why he doesn’t understand that what he’s doing is profoundly bad. It’s because everybody used him and abused him, and this is what he became because of them.
Adam: I’ve seen you mention wanting the town of Remis to feel like its own character, so I was hoping you could talk to me about giving the town its own identity.
Paolo: I knew I was going to shoot in Italy, so the most important thing was to find Remis in Italy. At the beginning, we wanted to shoot in Valle d’Aosta or Taranto, but those towns are way more polished than the Friuli-Venezia Giulia towns where we shot the film, so we chose that region…. The only scary parts that I wanted to give to this town were to always have this wall of mountains on the horizon. I chose a valley because in a valley, you never have direct light, you never have infinite landscape, you just have mountains in front of you, and you feel contained in a way.
For me, this was like producing the symbol of the arc in the landscape. Of course, it was difficult, it’s not easy to find a valley surrounded by the mountains like in a fairytale…. To create that feeling, we chose different towns on two different mountains…so it is not at all the same place and they are pretty far, like hours far. So we mainly filmed the picture in the area of Tervisio…the school is there, the pub is there. Then there are the streets with the houses which were shot in Sappada…. I had to find the right level of weirdness and beauty.
Adam: I’m shocked to hear it’s two different places because it feels so unified and cohesive. I think you struck that really well.
Paolo: Thank you!
Adam: Speaking of the town, I really loved the way you played with composition. In the beginning, when we get to the town, everything is very composed, and feels particular, and the camera is steady. But when we’re alone with Sergio, everything gets shaky and in-your-face. I feel like that dichotomy is all over the movie, so how did you decide when and where to opt for a more stylized look versus getting more kinetic?
Paolo: When I approach the language of a film, I always have in mind a side story that I can tell through language. For example, every time we see an upside-down shot, I use those in this film in the moment in which we underline the sexual attraction between Matteo and Lorenzo. That’s just an example. My intention at the beginning of the movie was to make it clear that it’s a beautiful place, but I used wide-angle shots to make this beauty uncomfortable in a way. We chose to have in this film during the shooting this aberration on the lenses. It was important for me to also have another representation of the arc in the film.
There are a lot of representations—the arc in the ritual, the arc in the landscape, but also the arc in the lenses. I wanted this film to look like it is a broad, big landscape, but in the end, I wanted to make people feel there is a constriction in it. Remis is like a cage, but I didn’t want to show it with close-ups and things like that. I want it to be more subtle…. But I really needed that to make people feel uncomfortable, even when I filmed in a beautiful place.
Adam: I think you tapped into the coming out experience in a way I haven’t really experienced, specifically in the way you capture the horrifying moment of realization that you aren’t what you’re “supposed” to be, and you’re not actually able to make it go away. Specifically, when his father says to Matteo, “You forgot who you are,” I feel like that’s such a big moment.
Paolo: I wanted to talk about a boy who doesn’t have the chance to find himself. I really think that if you are someone and you feel you are someone inside, but the misery of other people and the expectations of other people don’t let you be that someone, in the end, you will find yourself, but it’s how you find yourself that will define you…. Sometimes people can be a cage to you. To break out of that cage can also be a violent experience, and this is what happens to Matteo.
Matteo tries to give all the silence to his father. He doesn’t understand he’s going to explode, and eventually he explodes. This is the main queer element of the film for me. The way other people—because of their expectations, because of their misery, because of their need for something from you— put you in a cage and force you to break out in violent ways. We see a lot of violence in different cultural environments, and we tend to judge them; we tend to judge something we don’t understand. It’s how society forces them to be something they don’t feel they are. And that makes people become violent. I think we create the evil. The only way to have a world without evil is to practice empathy towards others.
This is really difficult. I don’t like when people say there’s good and evil because it’s so convenient. Some of our social constructs, some of our behaviors create evil. People are not good or evil. People turn into good and evil. If we want a better world. We have to treat people better, and we need to have more empathy towards people, and this is fucking difficult.
Adam: I totally felt that as a queer person myself who grew up in the church and that kind of environment. I felt that suffocation and that cage you’re talking about, not to quite that horrific degree. That suffocation and that cage you’re talking about, not to as horrific degree as we see in the movie. I really felt that, and it’s palpable. Did you bring any experience with organized religion to the film?
Paolo: Not really. Of course, I come from a Catholic family, but not a strict Catholic family. Growing up, I distanced myself from the Catholic religion. I don’t have anything against the Catholic religion; it’s hard for me to believe in Catholic dogma. But I don’t want to criticize the Catholic religion. It’s how we use Catholic religion; it’s the egoistic use of religion that I wanted to talk about. Luckily, I didn’t have a terrible experience with church, but I guess sometimes we use religion in a desperate way. Everything we do is in a desperate way. It’s what makes religion become dangerous.
Adam: You really strike a good balance between showing why people need religion and gravitate toward it, but also how it can become dangerous. I think you struck that beautifully.
Paolo: Thank you.
Adam: You talked about how this film is about those who are brave enough not to smile. How do you as an artist ensure you’re not suppressing difficult, uncomfortable feelings behind a facade? I know that’s a big question… [laughs]
Paolo: It’s a big question, but I can tell you something. I believe in what I’m saying with this film. I really worked on those thoughts a lot, but practiced those thoughts in real life. It is difficult. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to communicate, to express feelings, to accept my pain. Of course, this film says it’s okay to suffer; it’s part of the human experience. We should as a society try to learn not to demonize our pain because it makes it worse and makes us want to escape with shortcuts that ultimately will do harm to us. It’s a culture where society says it’s not okay to suffer…. This is not okay…. It will make us frustrated.
I know what I’m saying is right, but as a human being myself…it’s difficult to practice it, it’s difficult to express my pain. It’s difficult to accept that I must suffer. The truth is, I don’t know. Sometimes I’m more brave, sometimes I’m more lucid. But other times, I’m weak, I’m way more similar to the characters of my film than to the message of my film, but it’s okay. It’s okay to be weak, and it’s okay to say we all can do something to be a better version of ourselves and to feel better, and to heal ourselves. But it’s not easy, and we have to know it’s not easy…. It’s okay to feel miserable. It is okay.
I don’t want this film to be a “lesson” because I am no one to give a lesson. As an author, as a director, the only thing I can do is think of something, trying to look at something a certain way, then tell it through a narration, through a story, through a film. This film is not a film about heroes; it is about weak people. And this is okay. It’s okay if we are weak; we get better at some point.
Interview Courtesy of Adam Patla
Our full review of The Holy Boy can be found here.
Feature Image Credit to Shudder via Screen Daily