The Visit - Le Château de Versailles
22/09/2023 à 00:00Bobo spent over forty years in a psychiatric hospital. Wherever I found him, I took him with me. I don't like the word disability, I reject categories. Disability can be an opportunity, or rather, a grace. We live in an age of great "homologation", of compulsory conformity. There's a mystery about Bobo, as if things were passing right through him; he's a great actor, he doesn't project. He has a magical dimension; everything happens through him. When he puts on a garment, he becomes that garment. Since I've been living with Bobo, I know that the beauty of life is difference. When I was offered this project, I knew I wanted to shoot at the Château de Versailles. This immense place with its highly symmetrical architecture, its magnificence, the rooms with their chandeliers, furniture and gilding, all these traces of the "powerful". Versailles is a symbol of absolute power. I wanted to film the fragility of this place of power. I wanted two people to take this tour, like a stroll. I asked Michael Lonsdale to play Bobo. At over 83, illness and old age have made him vulnerable. Michael's large body, seemingly collapsing, next to Bobo's much smaller one, was both a contrast and a similarity. It's enough that they're both there, in that regal setting. Words are not fundamental, especially when you have two great actors who tell a lot by doing very little.
Pippo Delbono
