Paolo Virzì - The Leisure Seeker

The Leisure Seeker is the nickname of the old RV used by Ella and John Spencer to take vacations with their children in the 1970s. On a summer morning, desperate to escape a destiny of medical care that would have kept them apart forever, the couple astonish their meddling adult children by hopping on board that dated vehicle and dashing down Old Route 1 towards Key West for a new adventure. John is muddle-headed and forgetful but strong, Ella is feeble and fragile but still very lucid. Together, they barely make up a whole person. Their trip through an America they no longer recognize—mixing hilarious moments with others of pure terror—is their chance to retrace a married life nourished by passion and devotion, but also by secret obsessions that abruptly resurface and cause surprising revelations right up to the very end.

I never expected that one day I would direct a film set entirely in another country. So far, I’ve always declined the American projects I’ve been offered to direct. But I was convinced to at least try to write a screenplay and I made a promise to the producers: if Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland agreed to play Ella and John, I would make the film. It was a way of playing it safe with big talk. But fate knocked me sideways: unpredictably, Mirren and Sutherland said yes. A few weeks later, I was packing my bags to cross the ocean; I couldn’t deprive myself of sharing an experience like that with such a pair of amazing and legendary actors. But I had no intention of becoming an “American director”; I feel like a son of Italian cinema, although these days, the global sharing of stories and visions has made territorial boundaries fleeting and obsolete. Even on the East Coast, I tried not to give up the habits of a director born in Italy (actually in Livorno), using the ingredients that I always cherish: truth, humanity, irony, the mixture of comedy and tragedy, comic misadventures and moments of pure joy. It seems to me that the outcome is a road movie about the freedom to choose every moment of your life, told with the simplicity of a song. A funny and sad ballad, a bit unreasonable and crazy, but vital and happy.