As Pietro Masciullo writes, Grace “is a film that seeks to make the various souls of the cinema of Paolo Sorrentino virtuous dialogue” mixing the paradoxical figures of politics with moral doubts and personal traumas of life. The President of the Marian Republic De Santis (Toni Servillo) is now old and at the end of his term. Widow, ex-jurist and deeply Catholic, is faced with two last dilemmas: whether to grant grace to two people who committed a murder in circumstances that might be considered mitigating and whether to promulgate or not the thorny law on euthanasia.
At his side the daughter, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), jurist as he and direct thread with the present that, the President “Cement armed”, struggles to face with conscience. But also Colonel Massimo Labaro, who observes, listens and protects, always three steps back. With Labaro, the actor Orlando Cinque gives shape to a seemingly rigid figure, in which he cohabits the need for “holding” and a strong affection and emotional bond with his President.
During our meeting, he reveals that that was the most fascinating and difficult part of this role, “I was lucky enough to get into the Quirinale and to know the real figures [Head escort and Head of Security] that are behind this character. I was impressed and fascinated by their sympathy and simplicity, interesting people but above all with a great sense of mission. Without ever performing it, simply giving value to what they do.” The difficult though is to interiorize it as an actor because “the actor feels safer if he acts forcefully. That’s why I leaned on my emotional work that made me easy for the love I have against Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo”.
His scenes in The Grace are very often solitary alongside Toni Servillo. The Corazziere Labaro is present in the intimate moments of De Santis, in the secret aspired of cigarettes on the roof, perhaps the character played by Orlando Cinque is just what most of all has a spiraglio on man more than on the President. “Toni is one of the actors who made me want to do this job, so I have a natural reverence and respect for him. Then Toni is an adorable person, of great education, respect and humility on the set, makes everyone feel au pair, makes team and also balances the moments of tension that inevitably create on the set”, he says. Admitting that the link between Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo was an additional source of inspiration, the example of two people who “are friends, they love each other, but when they work they have a clear sense of their roles and therefore manage to maintain that distance. Distance you keep if you have strong respect for the thing you do.”.
And on the construction of the relationship almost father-son (on the contrary) adds: “if you think the secret is very simple. Today we have no time, but the closeness between these people [President and Colonel], in addition to the fact that they share an ideal and the value they give to this ideal, there is the fact that they share so much time together and that one of them respects the silence of the other. We are little time together and we are constantly talking about each other, it is difficult to create something, the secret is very simple, it is all there. ”
Of respect for his own roles and love, of this is composed The grace according to Orlando Cinque. The love of a father and daughter, of the President for his dead wife, of a madman against the person who must protect. A love that must be measured with death and the passing of time, “as almost all the things we live in our existence are measured before death, before death useless things disappear.”.
The Orlando Cinque folklore arrived around the age of 18, thanks to a theater course that began in a moment of emotional difficulty. He graduated in 1998 at the acting school at the Teatro Stabile in Genoa, then collected a large number of experiences as a theatrical actor, alongside Claudia Cardinale.
In television and cinema it was, among the many things, Trentadenari in the series Romanzo Criminale, and Marshal Roberto Mandolini in the film On my skin. The film, focusing on the death of Stefano Cucchi directed by Alessio Cremonini, requested Orlando Cinque to interpret a state charge completely opposite to Colonel de La Grazia.
“I kicked the dick out there, the bitch in all of us. It’s not nice, but that’s good, that’s what the movie needs. I found myself on a set that was electric, it was full of a very strong tension with an extraordinary director, an extraordinary human being, and with an extraordinary actor,” he says. “I still remember Alessandro Borghi in that film, it was the most extraordinary actors metamorphosis I saw before my eyes.”.
But if it is true that with the passing of the years we lose the necessity of freedom to acquire instead grace, as the character interpreted by Toni Servillo says, it is spontaneous to wonder what this grace really is and what interpretation gives it the actor. “I think it is the ability to rely on life. When you realize you’re not fighting the world, but if you rely on something bigger than you, you know that life doesn’t want you badly. Grace is what comes to you when you understand that – to paraphrase Paul – our days are not entirely ours”.
L’articolo Interview with Orlando Cinque: the silent presence of The Grace of Sorrentino comes from SentieriSelvaggi.
