The Goddess of Fortune (La Dea Fortuna) Italy
by Elisa Leonelli
La Dea Fortuna, by Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek, is the story of a gay couple in crisis, whose daily routine is upended when their best friend Annamaria (Jasmine Trinca) asks them to take care of her children, Martina 12 and Sandro 9, while she is undergoing diagnostic tests for migraines in a Rome Hospital. Arturo (Stefano Accorsi) is a frustrated writer working from home as a translator, Alessandro (Edoardo Leo) is a successful plumber who goes out to his job every day and supports the family. As they are forced to perform the duties of adoptive parents, their relationship, that had become stale after 15 year together, undergoes a change and they are able to rekindle their love for each other.
The director says that the idea for the film was inspired by his own experience, when one of his two twin brothers, Asaf, was dying of pancreatic cancer, and his sister-in-law, who was suffering from diabetes, asked him if he and his longtime partner, Simone Pontesilli, would agree to raise her twin children, a boy and a girl, if something should happen to her, because she trusted them more than some of their other relatives. Ferzan promised they would do it, but when he started thinking about such a huge responsibility, it frightened him.
Stefano Accorsi, who had acted in the director’s films Le fate ignoranti (2000) and Saturno contro (2007), says that this couple is surrounded by a group of friends, their chosen family, as it often happens in Ferzan’s films, reflecting the director’s real life.
Edoardo Leo says that his character has a manual job that he loves very much and allows them to live a comfortable life, while his partner is an intellectual who cannot bring in any money. When they suddenly have two children living in their house, they realize they can no longer argue and insult each other with nasty words, because the kids are listening, so they have to change their focus from each other to them.
Jasmine Trinca says that she plays an unconventional mother, with two children from different fathers who are not in their life, but when she has to leave them in the care of others, she chooses her dear friends over her own mother, love over biology.
The film shows a beautiful trip by ferry that the two men take with the children from Naples to Sicily to visit their grandmother in her 17th century villa in Bagheria near Palermo. The stern baroness is depicted like a wicked witch from Brothers Grimm fairytales, who literally used to lock up her children in a wardrobe, and is homophobic. Another location, that gives the film its title, is the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Palestrina near Rome, and it’s a ritual dedicated to this Roman Goddess that the new family performs at the end by bathing in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
Originally posted on Golden Globes website December 9, 2020