Filmmaker Giuseppe Garau takes us into the bizarre seedy underbelly of the Italian tow truck industry in his slow paced yet captivating feature L’Incidente (The Accident). Previously featured on DN with his mystery-laden short Seven Pizzas (Sette Pizze), Garau took a step back from big budgets and larger productions to re-asses his filmmaking practice and through experimentation with 16mm fulfilled a desire to widen his abilities and techniques, thus producing his first feature shot entirely on film. Garau found himself marvelling at the joys of not being beholden to a monitor on set, really allowing himself and the crew to live in each moment when shooting, a focus which flows through the slow cinema drama of L’Incidente. The film tells the story of Marcella a gentle-hearted mother going through a separation – captivatingly played by Giulia Mazzarino – who finding herself in a moment of need for money and work, unwisely sets out to make a living within the competitive, sleazy world of tow trucks where chasing car accidents is the norm. With L’Incidente currently on its festival run and having made its North American premiere at Slamdance last Friday, with an additional screening taking place on 25th January, we spoke to Garau about modifying the tow truck for Mazzarino who couldn’t legally drive it, filming the entire film from a fixed perspective and his renewed vigour for a more pared back approach to filmmaking.
L’Incidente is elaborate within its simplicity, how did it come to be?
L’Incidente was initially born because of a real accident. While I was driving with my daughter, a truck driver had an epilepsy attack and crashed into our car. In a few minutes we were surrounded by tow trucks. I later realised that they leave business cards at bars and corners and they promise you money if you call them whenever you see an accident. I became fascinated by this shady world and started to go around with them and get to know their lives. Then I asked myself, “What if I take a gentle-hearted character to live in this grim environment?” I also asked myself another question, “What if I shoot the whole film from one single perspective, one single camera angle, placed inside the vehicle?” I knew the idea was pretty crazy and I didn’t know if it would work out. I’m sure minimalism is going to be the death of me but I was obsessed with this idea so I just thought “Let’s do this, let’s have fun.”
With the streaming bubble and the race for content I believe there’s a toxic standardization of film grammar.
Over the past ten years I’ve been shooting both short films and documentaries. On two of the documentaries I was privileged to work with a big budget production which is a great and instructive experience. Yet at the end, I discovered I had no final cut, it was pretty painful and I ended up asking myself: “Do I care about having a big crew with two Arri Alexas if at the end of the day my vision is not recognised?”. Furthermore, with the streaming bubble and the race for content, I believe there’s a toxic standardization of film grammar. I wanted to take a few steps back and start again from the basics of the craft. I began to experiment with just a few friends and reels of 16mm film, and a couple of years later this language research led me to the production of L’Incidente.
How long did you spend in the underbelly of the tow truck word and how did it inform the writing?
Let me take a step back to say that there are different attitudes in the Italian tow truck world. There are a lot of hard-working honest people, there are tow trucks that work with the insurance companies, tow trucks that just work when someone calls the auto repair shop and then tow trucks that live down the streets like sharks waiting for accidents. There’s the honest side and the controversial one. I didn’t spend too many working days on tow trucks because most of them didn’t want me onboard. But I did a lot of research, and the few days I spent with them were really instructive. Spending time with them certainly gave the writing a texture of reality that I could play with and had fun mixing with the bizarre elements of surreality that I love. It’s also fun to mention that when we set up the biggest accident with the upside down car, a lot of tow trucks stopped by because people kept calling them hoping to get the tow truck money!
How did your experimentation with film lead into the production and shooting of L’Incidente?
We shot L’Incidente with a small crew of 20 people and around 30 actors and actresses. It was all shot with an Arri SR2 and no monitor, so we wouldn’t see anything we shot until the film development and scan a week later. This sounds pretty crazy in an era where we are used to constantly checking our footage and rewatching takes, but it really helped us in focusing on performances instead of just watching TV on set. Giulia Scintu, our cinematographer, did an outstanding job taking care simultaneously of the direction of photography, operating the camera and loading the film reels. On top of that, she also worked as her own focus puller, focusing the whole time on the face of Marcella, our protagonist, bringing her emotionally closer to the audience and isolating her from the surroundings outside the truck.
The world we’re seeing in the frame really doesn’t exist in reality, it’s flipped
A fun fact, Giulia Mazzarino who plays Marcella didn’t have a driving licence at the time of shooting. I started searching for British trucks with the steering wheel on the right but they were too hard to find here in Italy. So I decided to put a fake steering wheel for the actress on the right, a real driver on the left, the camera operator, myself or Giulia, in the middle and then I flipped the footage in post production. I did some tests and the trick worked. So in the film all the scenes where she’s driving are flipped. People haven’t noticed it and I think it gives a really small sense of weirdness because the world we’re seeing in the frame really doesn’t exist in reality, it’s flipped. And I find this subtle sense of strangeness interesting.
I never would have noticed that the wheel was flipped! What was your setup to capture everything in the van?
Our standard setup was Marcella on the left, me or Giulia in the middle and Marco Carito, our driver, on the right. Sometimes, in the scenes where the tow truck doesn’t move, we shot it traditionally with Marcella on the left steering wheel (the real one). So during most of the film the image is flipped, but sometimes it’s not. I think the flipped image gives the audience the inkling of a feeling that something in the out of focus world in the background is strange, but without noticing it directly, it just stays in the back of their mind. And it’s also cool that the film is representing a background world that doesn’t exist in real life since it’s flipped. The camera always frames Marcella and the focus is on the steering wheel, so whenever she gets out of the van, she goes out of focus. This enhances the feeling of Marcella’s isolation from the rest of the world.
This more deadpan style is not very common here in Italy, our comedy style is traditionally really more open and over the top.
I love the bizarre and almost surreal moments of deadpan comedy such as her interaction with the ambulance driver. What prompted you to inject these off-kilter moments of humour into the script?
When I was writing the first draft it was all very dramatic. But then I was getting bored reading it and started to put in some humor, more and more until it became a sort of weird comedy. I think it reflects my personality: laughing at my small traumas to exorcise them. Also, I think a lot about the audience when I read my drafts, I put myself in the audience seat and I just want to write something that I myself would enjoy. This more deadpan style is not very common here in Italy, our comedy style is traditionally really more open and over the top, but I wanted to see what would happen if I mixed the Ozu/Kaurismaki deadpan with the crazy stuff that happens in our bizarre country.
Marcella is so pure I almost ache for her and everything which is thrown at her. She is the beating heart of the film. Talk to us about developing her character and performance with Giulia Mazzarino who also starred in your 2018 short Sette Pizze.
I wish I could say we worked so hard rehearsing many and many times until everything was perfect but that would be a lie. She’s a very hard-working actress in theatre so her schedule is always extremely busy. She arrived a few days before the shoot and I had only been to her house once where we read the whole script once, not acting, just reading, and she took some notes here and there. Everything she did on screen is entirely down to her and she accomplished everything by herself. This was even more of an achievement given the fact that we had no monitors so she couldn’t rewatch herself. She’s always on screen so she was constantly in multiple scenes a day with no coverage, long takes with pages and pages to memorise and few takes to do it – she nailed all the time. She made it look so easy that during the shoot I ended up almost taking it for granted. When I rewatched the developed film I started to notice the many little nuances she added into Marcella’s character. I’m always impressed by great actors and actresses and I still have no idea how they do it, it’s really the most difficult job on set.
When it came to the formation of Marcella’s personality, one day me and Giulia were driving to Milan to meet Anna Coppola, a legendary Italian theatre actress who plays Anna in the film, the woman who sells the tow truck to Marcella. While we were driving we started to talk about the film and Marcella, and she saw that Marcella’s personality had a lot in common with my own. So, in building the character she took inspiration from my way of living, I was driving and she was in the passenger seat, studying me. I didn’t realise it while I was writing, but many of the things Marcella does like, for example, apologising for everything, or being a magnet for weird people and bizarre situations are things that I do. I really was slapped in the face, for no reason by a van rental man who I didn’t know. I would like to be tougher, but I guess this is my curse.
I love the simplicity and the cinéma-vérité approach. How did you plan your shots and offer us such a full world from a single camera angle?
Part of my research is always about setting up limits. I think that self-imposed formal limitations can be a great way to find alternative angles and different pathways to tell a story and avoid boring clichés. But mostly, it’s a great way for me to have fun telling a story. If I had the budget to shoot L’Incidente in a more standard film grammar way, I wouldn’t do it, it would be tremendously boring for me to approach a story with the usual established shot reverse shot approach. I wanted to experiment and see what would happen if I shot an entire film from one unique camera angle, showing the actress’ face and never what’s in front or behind her. Lately, we’re getting used to being treated like idiots and they think they have to show us an image for every single thing they talk about in a film, but if you don’t show things the audience will unconsciously imagine them and the audience’s imagination is more powerful than anything any filmmaker could film.
Not having a monitor on set forces you to pay attention to what’s actually going on in front of the camera instead of spending your time watching an LCD screen.
It’s interesting that the audience can experience L’Incidente in a way that the cast, crew and myself can never fully experience it, imagining the whole out of focus world around Marcella. Walter Murch wrote that the editor shouldn’t go on set because he doesn’t have to know the world outside the frame, I think it’s the same concept. When I was writing it and when I started shooting it I didn’t know if this extreme grammar could work, but now through the first festival screenings I’m seeing that people react emotionally and connect with the character. I encourage every filmmaker to experiment and try different ways because if you establish your rules at the beginning of the film and you stick to them, the audience will accept them and play by your book. But it makes sense for you to have fun with the form, because if it bores you it will bore the audience too.
How did not being able to see your footage in between takes change your approach on set?
I think it’s a nice example of turning a disadvantage into something good. Not having a monitor on set forces you to pay attention to what’s actually going on in front of the camera instead of spending your time watching an LCD screen. Director, cast and crew are all watching what’s happening in real life and living the moment. As a filmmaker, without a monitor you’re not just aiming for a perfect shot, you embrace the doubts, the flaws, the imperfections. When something special happens, you sense it, it’s in the air and you don’t have to rewatch it on a monitor to make sure it was great, you have to trust your instinct.
A theremin soundtrack certainly is unusual, what about Hekla’s music drew you in?
Once I had a first rough cut I tried hundreds of different types of music, but they all felt wrong. At some point, I discovered this incredible Icelandic artist Hekla. I tried all her songs and I really don’t know why, but her music world is the only one that fits L’Incidente, even though she sings in a totally different language and describes an obscure world extremely different from Turin. Hekla really takes the images to another level, something magical happens when her music plays. I messaged her on Instagram and she was very keen and helpful. Her music videos are 16mm experimental black & white films so she already represented her work with analogue film before L’Incidente.
I think I find something more meaningful in film and when it’s rolling, that time is sacred.
Are you going back to digital and more modern setups or are you fixed on a love and reclamation of simpler times of filmmaking? What’s next for you?
I have nothing against digital, I think it’s great, but now whenever I think about working with it again I feel that something is missing and there’s always something that drives me back to film. I think I find something more meaningful in film and when it’s rolling, that time is sacred.
In regards to the future, I have a couple of subjects that I would like to write but first I have to see if during 2024 I will manage to get some of the money back from L’Incidente so I can shoot another one. I don’t want to become big, I feel more comfortable with micro-budget productions, but even with micro-budgets it’s still a tough industry to be in and I’m not very good with selling and with business in general. It can be frustrating and sometimes you really just want to give up and find a normal job but some really respectable festivals are selecting the film so I’m very happy and grateful for how our work is being received.
