Cinema Scholars interviews Adam Leon, the director of the new drama Italian Studies starring Academy Award nominee Vanessa Kirby. Magnolia Pictures will release Italian Studies in theaters and on-demand on January 14, 2022.
Introduction
Meandering experimental or cinéma vérité films are usually a hard sell theatrically. Style and imagery that resonate with filmmakers and cinephiles don’t always translate well to mainstream audiences. While it’s not at all pedestrian to desire some sort of arc or structure within a film, the more avant-garde offerings of the art form typically don’t follow an easily palatable formula.
Nevertheless, some of the most renowned directors have managed the clever trick of combining a more eccentric aesthetic with a somewhat formulaic framework to create some of the most enduring treasures of cinema. In Adam Leon’s latest film, Italian Studies, the director takes this cue by tempering his arthouse tendencies with just enough intrigue to result in a captivating and unexpected love letter to NYC, living in the moment, and embracing unjaded joy.
Synopsis
The film begins as the main character (Vanessa Kirby) is reacquainted with a teenager whom she met on the fateful day she suffered a mysterious amnesia episode. While the young woman fills her in on recollections from the incident, the film flashes back to the moment when the protagonist’s mind goes blank, sending her on an endless walk through the travails of the big city. Along the way, she befriends a group of teenagers who take her under their collective wing as she pieces together the details of her life that slowly begin to emerge.
Performances
Appearing in virtually every frame of Italian Studies, Vanessa Kirby (The Crown, Mission: Impossible-Fallout) stars as the bewildered woman who spends a day wandering the bustling streets of New York City with zero recollection of who she is or where she should go. Though her character (soon revealed as Alina Reynolds, author of a book of short stories) can best be described as unmoored, Kirby’s portrayal is the anchor of the loosely structured narrative.
Alina searches for clues to her life while literally living moment to moment, and Kirby makes it clear that the wheels are constantly turning despite the listlessness. When she mingles with her newfound young friends, Kirby’s warmth and openness radiate to her unjaded costars with quite an endearing result.
Straightforward interviews with the teenagers also intermingle with engrossing sequences like an open-mic night and a house party. While some of these scenes serve to accentuate the confusion of Alina’s predicament, they also actually help balance any uneasiness with a natural unfettered joy of youth.
Further Notes
Throughout the misadventure, the omnipresent cacophony of the city melds with Niv Adiri’s undulating sound design and a pulsing score by award-winning composer Nicholas Britell. This aural blanket provides an additional layer of authenticity to Leon’s ode to NYC’s inexplicable energy.
With its avant-garde aesthetic, subtle but captivating narrative arc, plus a refreshingly succinct running time to boot, Italian Studies succeeds where many arthouse offerings fall short. Cinema Scholars recently had the pleasure to chat with director Adam Leon about making Italian Studies, avoiding the pitfalls of experimental filmmaking, and collaborating with his cast and team.
Inspiration
Rebecca Elliott:
Hi Adam! I’m pleased to meet you, and I’m so excited to talk about Italian Studies. I was watching it and loving it and then caught myself thinking, “Wait a second, did I just get tricked into enjoying an experimental/vérité film?” Because you struck a really nice balance between arthouse and intrigue, which sometimes is lacking from these types of films. Can you talk about where this project started?
Adam Leon:
That’s amazing. I want to talk about your reaction to it. That’s really wonderful and is something that we talked about a lot. I was like, if we’re going to make this weird-ass movie that takes place from her point of view and switches seasons in the span of a shot and is unmoored and surreal at times, we have to make it short and we have to make it fun. And we have to make it beautiful and ultimately we have to make it warm.
It was important for us, for it to be entertaining. To have those things and to really tell a story. Because I do think it’s more important in a movie where you’re being so emotional in the filmmaking and somewhat oblique in some of the plotting to make sure that you are taking care of the audience in some light.
Elliott:
Right.
Leon:
So that’s wonderful to hear. We are trying to trick people into … I mean, it’s not to trick people, but yeah, I mean, God knows I don’t want to watch a two and a half hour movie about somebody just wandering New York City. And so if I’m about a 78-minute movie about a beautiful woman wandering New York City with a bunch of teenagers and a lot of music and stuff like that, I can get into this.
Elliott:
I’m totally teasing you about the “trick” part, of course. But it’s funny that you bring-
Leon:
No, no, no. Definitely, I agree.
Running Time
Elliott:
Well, you bring up … Actually, that was another one of my questions, or rather points I wanted to bring. I appreciate the running time because I feel like so many filmmakers these days just do these insufferable, two-hour-plus films when really they could have told a very succinct, wonderful story in 90-minutes. And so I appreciate that, but was there a lot that you had to cut? I mean, can you talk about that process of reining it in?
Leon:
Oh yeah, it [the running time] was always because of the nature of the story and how we were telling it. It seriously was something where the running time was on our minds at the very beginning, that this was something that we wanted to make sure was a 90-minute movie. I mean, you can tell the story, however…It’s as long as the story needs to be but this was a story that should be told that way for a bunch of reasons. And one of them is because of what is challenging about it, and how that’s going to fit with an audience.
So, yeah, that was something we did. And yes, we shot way more…We shot a lot of stuff that was great, I think, that was more about her short stories. Some more stuff in her short story world. You see one of them in the movie, with Maya Hawke. There were two others that we had and some more interactions that she had with people, some stuff that was cool.
We had so many interviews that were amazing. We had hours and hours of great stuff. An endless amount of pretty shots of Vanessa. There were a lot of feedback screenings that we did because you need to try to find this balance where you feel the lens of this journey that she’s on but that it’s not so indulgent.
Elliott:
Right.
Leon:
And you know, some people are going to watch it and think we did that but some people aren’t. But yeah, how do we make sure every shot counts. And there would be a lot of like, “Oh, but that shot with the helicopter is so beautiful.”
Elliott:
So beautiful. We have to use it!
Leon:
Yeah. But I’m pretty merciless with that.
Casting and Collaboration
Elliott:
That’s good. That’s a good way to be. And I definitely took note and appreciated it…I thought I bet there’s so much that he wanted to leave in, but it just probably didn’t make sense for the arc and the narrative. And speaking of Vanessa Kirby, who is incredible and obviously the pivotal role of the film, can you talk about how she came on board and your collaboration with her? And you also cast all these teenagers who are great. I assume maybe some of them are professional, but some of them are amateur. Can you talk about that dynamic between Vanessa and the kids? Just working with her must have been incredible.
Leon:
It’s incredible. I’ve known her for years. And so we were friends and were looking for something to do together. And so we were really excited to work and then she developed the story with me. I mean, this was not a story that I made and then said, “Oh, maybe Vanessa will be good for this.” This was something that Vanessa came to me and said, “Let’s do something and this is my schedule over the next year. Let’s do something that can work in that schedule. Let’s go. I want you to throw me out into the streets of New York”, which I’ve done in previous work of mine. She’s like, “I want you to do your thing.” I was like, “No, that’s not my…” My thing is, whatever. I want you to do your thing.
And so it really came from us working together in step…then I’d been working with these teenagers on a live show, a couple of months before Vanessa came to me…there were just so many special people involved in that. And I was like, well, this idea of somebody who’s searching for their identity, getting immersed with these kids who are trying on different suits and identities of their own and figuring that out at that moment in their life feels like a good fit. Plus, they’re awesome.
And so we brought a lot of those kids in…we brought a casting director on and brought in more. And then I worked a lot with those kids in New York for about three months, at a rehearsal process where Vanessa was doing her own work on the research and development of the movie…Then we put them all together and I think it’s a testament to Vanessa because she’s great at everything that she does. How good she is with those kids and how much she’s able to bring a really special and open performance from that.
Unjaded Joy
Elliott:
Because not every actress, I think, would have that capability to be patient and just to be open to their unjaded joy and what they bring to the-
Leon:
She fed so much off of their unjaded joy. That’s a great way of saying it, too, because it’s one of the things that we looked at with the teenagers. Because we met with hundreds of teenagers, and one of the things my casting director said that they were really excited about is that we were drawn to the ones who were not jaded, who were really open, who were curious. She was so moved and inspired by that. Oh, and also one of the things I think is, it’s this very challenging role for her because she had to embrace the idea of not knowing her character.
Elliott:
Oh wow, that’s right.
Leon:
Which is not her process. And within that, she had to really embrace what I think all actors embrace that she embraces normally, anyway, but really embraced the idea of failing, of trying things that aren’t going to work. And I think to have these non-professional teenagers see her be so, both accessible and open, to them and also be unafraid or a little afraid.
Elliott:
Sure.
Leon:
And be open about that. Of making mistakes, of it not working, of not clicking in right away, I think, was really relieving and exciting for them.
Elliott:
Well, it came through definitely, the authenticity. I’m glad that you went with the unjaded because that came across to me. I was like, “Oh, I’m getting so much just joy from them.” You know what I’m saying? There’s no facade yet.
Leon:
We’re so used to working on projects or ads where it’s like, “Oh, we really like this kid. They’re so wonderful and warm and interesting but this other one’s hair is just like, it’s more badass.”
On Set
Elliott:
Oh geez. Right. Not what we’re going for. Well, can you talk a little bit about how you shot Italian Studies? I mean, it looks like it was shot guerilla-style. I don’t know if it really was. Can you talk about the process and were you just running and gunning or was everything meticulously choreographed?
Leon:
It depends, it depends. My thing is always, how do we tell this story? And what’s the right way to tell it visually and what’s the right way to shoot it. And so there were days where we would allocate a lot of time to…We’re going to go, we’re going to follow Vanessa and she’s going to interact with the city and we’re going to spend three hours and we’re going to take the subway.
And then we would map out what we would do… and we’ll do this and then we’ll break for lunch and then we’re going to shoot the scene. And that scene is at a hot dog place where we are paying a location fee and we are closing it down and we were shooting with a script and with coverage.
So it depended on what felt right for that scene or that part of the story. And yeah, it was a lot of guerilla stuff but in New York, you’re kind of allowed to do that in the way that we did. So we weren’t really hiding.
Elliott:
Right. (joking) Sorry, let’s clarify. You weren’t doing anything illegal.
Leon:
Sometimes on the other ones, a little bit. But it’s usually the things that people think we did that were illegal are legal and that was illegal.
Elliott:
I love that.
Leon:
On this one. Yeah, I think we were pretty legal.
Teamwork
Elliott:
Good answer. Now, of course, in a film like Italian Studies- a film that’s kind of meandering and has that backward arc in a way- the sound design was very important. Also, as a side note, I finally recently started to binge Succession. And the main theme from that show has been stuck in my head for a week. And then I’m doing my research for Italian Studies, and I’m like, “Holy shit! Same composer! Of course, of course.” I love that kind of kismet. So can you talk about working with Nicholas Britell, the composer? And then also the importance of the sound design and getting the vibe across that you were going for?
Leon:
I’ll start with Nick and it’ll lead us to the sound design.
Elliott:
Perfect.
Leon:
When we were conceiving the movie, something that I talked to the producers about was not only…And I’ve worked Nic on all of my projects. We’re friends. How important is the sound design and the interaction between the score, the dialogue, the soundscape of the city that’s more of the surreal design in our head? How key that is going to be to the story.
This may sound a little pretentious or whatever, but I was like, “We’re going to have to be able to listen to the movie. I want to be able to, not look at it and to listen to the hour and 20-minute version of this and it tells a story. “And so Nic and I talked a lot about…It was a different approach than we had in the other movies. It was a lot more emotional score. And we talked a lot about how creating that, again, for an hour and 20 minutes, it should sound like one sound piece.
So how does the score handoff to the sound design, to the dialogue, back to the sound design, back to the score? How do those things interact with each other? Where really also, it is a movie where the structure can be hard to grab onto, as you sense. How can we have the score help us with that, with themes that come back and interact with each other? And so how do we make this really an audio suite? Nic and I worked a lot on that.
Then Nic brought in a guy named Niv Adiri, who is incredible and a very accomplished sound designer and editor above our pay grade, but who really dug the project and had worked with Nic before. And Niv just totally understood that and was able to do things that don’t come naturally to me, in terms of, finding the character in the sound.
Elliott:
Right. Such a unique skill.
Leon:
The key, key, key part of this, and yeah.
Elliott:
Wow. Well, it really came across. I mean, yeah, it was beautiful.
Leon:
Nic’s talent is out of control and I mean, what he did on some of my other stuff is more like creating songs and score that moves us plot-wise, but he really can do everything. And it’s been so fun to see his career take off.
Conclusion
Elliott:
Totally. That must be super cool. Well, dang, I have about 20 more questions but I think I just hit the 15-minute point, so I probably should bid you adieu. But thank you so much and thanks for the film. I really enjoyed it.
Leon:
Yeah. This was really fun. I really like talking to you. You have a great vibe and energy.
Elliott:
Ah, thank you. I appreciate that! Have a great day and good luck with everything.
Leon:
Thanks so much. Have a good one.
Magnolia Pictures will release Italian Studies in theaters and on-demand on January 14, 2022.
