"To discover, day after day, the talent of an actress, the hidden treasure of her resources, is the most wonderful adventure that can befall a director: it’s like being an astronomer at the telescope who chances upon a brand-new celestial body.
And yet she was always there, with those elfin eyes, that Mozart in her voice… all the leading characters in this film have achieved a ‘liminal’ experience (one at the confines between private life and the character) but what Sonia Bergamasco has dared to do – like an acrobat on the wire, without ever losing sight of the coordinates of the real and the imaginary – seems to me to be something very rare. I filmed her with admiration and delight. And gratitude.”

Giuseppe Bertolucci (from the director’s notes)