The Ignorant Fairies

The major exponent of the surrealistic wave, René Magritte, with “La fée Ignorante” painted in 1956, represented art as an ignorant fairy, intended it as an entity able to do magic whose real meanings remain unknow to the majority and to logical thinking. Magritte’s painting is the background for one of the most representative Italian movies in the LGBTQI community: “Le fate Ignoranti” (Ozpetek, 2001). As the French painter, Ferzan Ozpetek, the Turkish naturalised Italian director of this film, represented love and human emotions, as well as the characters of this movie, as ignorant fairies, mysterious and full of intrinsic meaning mostly undiscovered by people.

“Le fate Ignoranti”, or “Ignorant Fairies” in the version released in 2003 in Uk, has been directed in Rome in 2001, a thorny moment in Italian history for the reach of genders equality and for the political scene. In fact, at the beginning of the century, LGBTQI movements, whose voice could not be ignored anymore by media and politic personalities after the first Gay Pride in 1994, were claiming for the recognition of civil rights and, in 2003, finally sexual orientation was recognised as not a reason anymore to discriminate people at the fieldwork (DL 216/2003).

The plot of this movie focuses on Antonia, interpreted by an amazing Margherita Buy, middle-age woman and doctor, whose life is completely shattered after her husband Massimo’s (Andrea Renzi) sudden death. Following his departed, in fact, she finds a painting with a love note signed ‘La tua fata ignorante’, your ignorant fairy. After desperately looking for Massimo’s lover, Antonia discovers that the woman was seeking is a young man, Michele, a convincing Stefano Accorsi at his early performances, and that they have been in a relationship for 7 years, loving each other and sharing their lives in secret. Looking for answers about her husband, Antonia takes part in Michele’s life, meeting his extended family, a heterogenous group of people of different cultural background, sex, gender and sexual orientation.

She spends time with them, discovering their reality and the one they were sharing with Massimo and she could not even imagine as extremely far from the one they had created together. After the initial difficulty, Antonia and Michele’s relationship becomes emotionally intimate, they mix their feeling and experience, sharing each other passions and interpretations, developing a spiritual and emotional connection; they struggle understanding their feeling, become more deeper, and, when she discovers being pregnant of Massimo’s baby, decides to leave for a journey on herself.

The final scene leaves the audience with an open interpretation: Michele intentionally let a glass fall on the floor and it does not break and, as per a Turkish tradition, it means that the person who you love will not leave you or, with an opposite interpretation, it means that you do not love them.

With attention and sensitivity, Ozpetek represented the multi-coloured range of human types and emotions, with a focus on genders and sexualities. From Massimo’s hidden homosexuality to Michele’s friend Ernesto’s barebacking, Le fate Ignoranti can be described as a precursor of movies treating genders and sexual interactions in Italy of the new century.

Awarded in 2002 as Best Film at the New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the director started with Le Fate Ignoranti the first of his numerous movies exploring human nature; Ozpetek himself said, during an interview in 2018 that directing Le Fate Ignoranti and choosing Rome as setting was like a homecoming after his previous film and the treated theme were a long shot for their complexity at those times: the impact they had on audience, as remarked few times, was strong and would not be so easy, for him, cover them again with the same audacity he had in 2001 (CG Entertainment, 2018).

The starting point of the whole story is Massimo, even if his physical appearance on the screen lasts no more than the few initial minutes. In fact, after his sudden death, the first part of the movie is centred on is hidden homosexuality: in order to maintain his social status of man on the move and faithful husband, he hid his sexuality and showed himself to Antonia and his colleagues as a straight masculine man. Antonia herself, when meets Michele, affirms that is not possible that Massimo was homosexual, she would have known. The need to appear as ‘a straight man’ in order to be part of a group is recurrent in social environment (Warrington, 2015), the fear of being judged and excluded is reflected in the interactions with other people and, when in a library Massimo met Michele for the first time, he started creating a hidden life where he could express a different part of himself. He knew that his coming out would have had a social and logistic impact on his life so he decided to play a script: even if geographical migration could often represent a way to escape and build a new life (Vasquez del Aguila, 2012) , in this case he decided not to move but to change his current reality or, more precisely, to create a new one. Even if not completely understood by Antonia at the beginning, after having met Michele’s enlarged family, everything becomes clearer: in this heterogeneous group, everything is colourful, with shades, sounds and stories intertwined with respect.

During the course of the movie, Antonia and Michele become more intimate, sharing their real nature. If Antonia is portrayed as a character with an interesting and curious cultural background, she is also depicted as a woman who was overshadowed by her husband and his needs, in a life without particular and sudden emotions but fulfilled by an established routine.

 It suddenly changes when she is overwhelmed by the new discovery and starts focuses on herself, however she does not lose, until the end, her traditional approach to sexuality, first by refusing a kiss from Emir, one of Michele’s friend, and then judging the sexual fluidity of Michele himself, guilty of having approached two guys in front of her during a party. Being Michele accused of not being in love with Massimo because of this menage a trois, it reflects how sex is often seen inevitably connected with love. However, on the contrary, she never judges Michele’s sexuality itself as a homosexual man. This one, in fact, is portrayed as a young in love man with Massimo, and strictly attached to his friends and his reality.

Despite of and even during the shades of rage shown at the beginning because always been obliged to hide his relationship with Massimo, Michele never tries to cover is sexuality, moreover the open end of the movie let the audience perceive that he is attracted physically and emotionally by Antonia, leaving a free interpretation for his bisexuality, the same we can also suppose for Massimo even if never mentioned in the film. As Gagnon affirms in “An interpretation of desire: essays in the study of sexuality” (Gagnon, 2004), the behaviour can be both verbal and non-verbal, with actors that are not aware of playing a script but working between the limits of it, which can be fluid according to the situations.

In this particular scenario, Michele is labelled, since the beginning of the film, as a gay man, but he is moving throughout blurred borders, and the same did Massimo, and this lets the audience question the definitions previously given: bisexuality is never mentioned but Ozpetek himself left open this interpretation, never denying it.

The richness of this movie comes not only from the main plot and the interpretations of the protagonists, but from the miscellaneous group of realities and personalities around them. The initial way Michele looks for an approach with Antonia, for example, is through Ernesto, interpreted by a young Gabriel Garko at his beginning.

Ernesto is initially depicted as a sick person in his bed and on medications; the intensity of the scene is strictly connected not only with the interpretation but with the environment, with a dark greyish room and old melancholic music used to emphasise his situation. Helped by Antonia to receive his care, he opens with her, telling his story: he was totally in love with a guy, and he wanted to share everything with him, also his disease, the HIV, so he intentionally had non-protected sex with him and got infected. Ernesto gives Antonia every details of the day he was infected, sharing with the audience his deep love for the other guy and letting people understands the reasons of the decision he made.

If many studies and reports claim that barebacking can often be connected with the need of transgression, especially in young communities (Avila, 2015), or the necessity to feel part of a group (CNN interview, 2008), in this picture Ernesto clearly expresses his deep love and the will to share also the problems his partner had, even if the relationship was complicated by the emotional unreliability of his partner. At the beginning of the new millennium, Italian media started showing interest in the barebacking, also thanks to the increased popularity of LGBTQI community’s movements, and bringing on the screen this topic was extremely innovative and bold.

However, despite of the spread of this phenomenon and the resonance on media, the first published data of new HIV infections, and not only new AIDS cases, were in 2010, with no possibility of certified statistics of the previous years (Notiziario ISS, 2012). One of the articles written at the time is “Basta, troppi divieti così I gay sfidano l’AIDS” (Stop, too many restrictions so gay people challenge AIDS) (Bonerandi, 2000), published in 2000 and, unconventionally, represents clearly the spread of this phenomenon in the Italian communities: in particular, this article tells the story of a 35years-old man who decided to be part of the barebacking community after a personal crisis, thinking of himself almost as immune, invincible and with the need to belong to a social group. In Le fate Ignoranti, Ernesto is not pushed by the will of being part of a crew, but with no doubts the concept of belonging is recurrent and could also be identified in the relationships the whole set of characters in the movie has with each other.

As previously anticipated, the spectrum of sexualities showed in this film is extremely various, and sometimes only given as a quick but deep input. Not only Ernesto and the theme of HIV, but also relationship with family, jealousy and violence are treated. This last one is the example performed by Serra, interpreted by Serra Yilmaz, recurrent cameo in Ozpetek’s movies, who can be described as a glue that holds the group together.

Administrator of the building where most of the characters live, she is represented as the wisest and, only at the end of the film, more details are revealed about her during her reunion with her younger brother Emil, tireless traveller. During the whole movie she supports Michele and Antonia, as well the rest of the group in their experiences and, at the end of the film we discover an intense detail of her life: she was raped when she was younger and her aggressor, probably a policeman with political support who never was arrested, was finally charged. She finds comfort and relief in her brother’s words, almost like as a closure finally put to that part of her life. In this scenario, even if not many details are given, the audience can suppose that violence was not only gender-based, but socially and powered based.

It is estimated that in Italy in 2006, the nearest to 2001 research found, 31,9% of women between 16 and 70 years old had experience physical or emotional abuse inside or outside the domestic environment (Istat, 2007); the percentage in 2014 is 31,5% (Istat, 2015), tragically stable. The theme treated, even if only for few seconds, was and is extremely thorny in Italy, were violence and homicides towards women are almost every day on the first page in newspapers.

Gender violence, as well as homosexuality, HIV and all the other topics this film explores, are major themes all over the worlds, but it is not possible to deny that, in an extremely catholic country such as Italy, filming them at the beginning of the millennium has been extremely audacious.

“Le fate ignoranti” treats, with sensitivity and sometimes even in only few sentences, some of the main issues about genders and sexuality and it is not practicable mention all of them. However, despite the different personalities and subjects that it is possible to analyse in this film, the recurrent point is the idea of belonging.

Starting with Massimo’s need to fit in his “official” environment and ending with Mara, a transgender lady who is scared of showing her transition to her family because afraid of losing them, it is always like an invisible thread which, at the end, connects all the characters around the table where they always eat and share their emotions together. They are aware that society can be unfair with them, even requiring them to lie in order not to lose who they love, but they are also conscious that they are always welcome there.

This table can be interpreted as a space where everyone is welcome despite of sexual orientation and personal decisions, and where all the people can receive honest advice: it is their safe place. And it is surrounding this table the Antonia opens herself to new opportunities: Ozpetek himself defines the ignorant fairies as people who, even if occasionally pedants and rude, are able to show you realities that were ignored before, sometimes almost rousing your reality. This is what happens to Antonia who, even if at the beginning wanted to spy from the keyhole her husband’s secret life, at the end she is catapulted in a new existence where she can be able to explore herself, her sexualities and a more colourful world than the one she was used to.