Joie de vivre (Pt. 1)

Luca Guadagnino’s JOIE DE VIVRE is a film that resists the easy qualifiers of cinematic nomenclature. Taking Bernardo Bertolucci’s filmography as a narrative nexus, this document essay operates through personal, unbridled hypertextuality, making it appear less like an encyclopaedia spanning an over seven-hour runtime than an endearingly bulky scrapbook. Divided into two parts, the film largely consists of intimate, lengthy conversations that Guadagnino had with prominent filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, James Gray and David Cronenberg, as well as film critics and collaborators whose paths have encountered the Italian maestro’s poetics and politics. The first half delves into Bertolucci’s works up to the mid-1970s, including IL CONFORMISTA (1970) and ULTIMO TANGO A PARIGI (1972), films that allow Guadagnino to address head on the discussions surrounding the homosexual undertones in his films and the sexual assault controversy involving Maria Schneider. Guadagnino doesn’t shy away from implying his own opinions, while also providing a reflective space for his interviewees’ varying stances—a gesture that grows into a critical exercise, one that the film laments the disappearance of within contemporary cinephile culture. (Öykü Sofuoğlu)

Luca Guadagnino: THE PROTAGONISTS (1999), MELISSA P. (2005), IO SONO L’AMORE (2009), A BIGGER SPLASH (2015), CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017), SUSPIRIA (2018), BONES AND ALL (2022), CHALLENGERS (2024), QUEER (2024), AFTER THE HUNT (2025), ARTIFICIAL (2026)