English: “I Know You”
Italian drama filled with rough sex – or is it rape?
Femicide, a common occurrence, is at the heart of I Know You , filmed in Naples. Everything that follows this tragic experience endangers the lives of those who have lived through it. The film, written by Laura Angiulli, draws inspiration from a true story, that of a friend of the director’s, who lost her mother in the tragic event at the age of five, and her father to suicide. Nina (Sara Drago) lives a parallel story, searching for the truth and confronting a past trauma. Her life becomes intertwined with the film she is editing, which focuses on jealousy and violence. That ancient childhood trauma cannot help but return with force. A boat trip in the Gulf of Naples brings to light the mysterious disappearance of her husband Giulio (Ludovico Fededegni). Her search leads her to meet Francesco (also played by Fededegni), and it’s like rewinding the tape of her own life, embracing the same man from her first relationship. The relationship increasingly falls apart, fear takes over, so much so that she can’t avoid or avoid running away. What really happened to Giulio? Did he drown, was he murdered, or simply disappear into thin air? When Nina meets Francesco and exclaims, “I know you,” a glimmer of hope appears.
She searches for traces of the past in that man, searching for herself and her tremendously frustrating and oppressive experience. The abyss lies ahead: escape or be overwhelmed by events? This is the excruciating and devastating dilemma she faces.
I Know You also addresses cinema, the traits of great tragedy on the big screen, the passion for mixing dull, ordinary everyday life with the protagonist’s inner torment. Editing and re-editing the same scenes, floating on the boat and in that large, deserted apartment, transform theatrical anguish into a wandering through the city, through its empty rooms. Movement expands the void and simultaneously fills it with horror at human contact. The ferocity of a moment, likely the cause of the death of her loved ones, is for Nina just another unwitting example of two parallel lives, two paths that do not intersect only because of our earthly limitations.
Sara Drago did full-frontal nudity naked in Diabolik, Chi Sei? (2023)