Costanzo film centres on Wilma Montesi, Hollywood On Tiber

Saverio Costanzo’s new film ‘Finalmente l’alba’ (At Last The Dawn), presented in competitin in Venice Friday, centres on the story of Wilma Montesi, an aspiring actress whose grisly murder on a Rome beach in 1953 sparked a media feeding frenzy on alleged drug-fuelled orgies in the Roman upper classes, and on the roaring years of ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’ which climaxed with the 1963 movie Cleopatra starring real-life lovers Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

“I tell the story of the cinema-dream and the actors, our heroes,” said Costanzo, known for his 2014 film Hungry Hearts and for adapting and directing for TV Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend.

Also conquering the scene on the Lido Friday was an almost always naked Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, a sort of female Frankenstein brought back to life with a child’s brain that makes her “a very cute retard, the actress said in describing the sex-discovering protagonist of Poor Creatures! by The Lobster and Poor Things helmer Yorgos Lanthimos, also in the running for the Golden Lion.

Source: Ansa News Agency (ANA)