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subscribe to style file blog via RSSmike figgis’ roman holiday
July 31, 2008 12:04 pm
“Leaving Las Vegas” director Mike Figgis has turned his eye to fashion, kind of, with a short film and photo installation piece, created in collaboration with photographer Massimo Vitali. It’s called “Piazza di Spagna,” and it was shot on location in Rome. Featured actress Katie Saunders plays four different characters, two of whom are exaggerated fashionista types. The other two characters, by contrast, are a starry-eyed tourist and an up-to-no-good ne’er do well. Style.com caught up with Figgis at the film’s premiere at London’s Somerset House last night, which was attended by Jimmy Choo, Agent Provocateur founder (and Vivienne Westwood scion) Joe Corre, Serpentine Gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, “The Wire”’s Dominic West, and designer Agnès B., whose company underwrote the project.
How did you and Massimo Vitali meet and how did you decide to collaborate on this project?
The common denominator was our producer, Vito Di Rosa, who’s someone I’ve worked with and known quite a long time in London, but who is Italian. I happened to say to him one day, “I’m a big fan of this photographer, Massimo Vitali,” and he went, “Oh, he’s a friend of mine. You should meet him, you guys would get on very, very well.” So we had a meal and then we had a conversation: It would be really nice to do something together. And then Agnès B. came onboard as our financial producer. And that’s really how it all began.
In the piece, there is a little bit of a focus on fashion. There are two characters in it that you describe as “fashion victims.” What is it about that place (the Spanish Steps) and fashion and people displaying themselves that drew your attention?
Well, it’s very visually engaging, number one. And it’s also something that’s so much a part of our lives now with fashion TV and all the rest of it, so that fashion has become such a big cultural event, much more so than it ever was before. And so I quite liked the idea of pushing the boundary a bit, because normally we just see that character on a catwalk or something like that. Then, I needed to come up with four characters for the one actress, so those were two of them—very contrasted—and then two other characters. So, I just thought that would work quite well, given that it’s also a visual piece; it?s not dialogue based like a normal film.
At one point in the film, Katie Saunders walks past that line of exclusive boutiques (Dior, YSL) that leads off the Piazza and you actually see a couple of women who look like her character, watching her…
I loved it. I mean I loved the fact that all those beautiful little ironies were present in that one little area of Rome. You have the fashion street, very high-end, and then you have the more funky side streets, and then you have this huge meeting place for the world’s tourists, sitting almost on a stage. I felt that that was potentially really good material for ironic coincidences; also as something for the actress to play off of in each of those different characters.
The top of the Spanish Steps, in front of the Trinità dei Monti, is prime advertising real estate. What do you think of the way that advertising images have become so much a part of classical sites around the world?
I’m not crazy about it. I mean, there’s so much advertising now at the Cannes Film Festival that you can’t see Cannes anymore. For the duration of the festival, everything is covered, like in Los Angeles, with billboards and now electronic billboards as well. I think it’s a shame. I think there should be some kind of curb on it.
A lot of this piece also has to do with digital cinema and photography and what they can do. Digital cameras have made everything from Facebook to amateur online porn possible. Do you get the feeling that we’re being overloaded with images that many times are meaningless to everyone other than their creators?
Yes, but there’s nothing you can do about it. The genie’s out of that bottle. And it creates its own genre of disposable imagery, low-end imagery. It has a nasty side to it, which is a kind of vindictive, gossip element, but at the same time there are little pearls in it as well. As ever, great stuff will emerge and be seen as separate from that kind of general mess, if you like. Nah, it doesn’t worry me; it’s just the way it is.
What’s the overarching message of this piece?
No message. It’s two artists observing.
Victoria
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