Outline for a proposed 2.0: Dario [or Primavera ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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16 July
Outline for a proposed film 2.0 : Dario [or Primavera ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade
NB Now superseded by version 2.1 - fully corrected, and with preliminary ideas for casting
'Reap what ye shall sow'
For Rosy and Brent
1. Maria Mandragora and Michael Hope meet at a performance of Verdi's Otello, and, talking during the interval, become friends : he is in Milan for a year during his degree (Italian and French), and she is older, and did not go to university, but has already established herself in business, buying and selling rare recordings as Mandragora
2. They are close, but never lovers - something holds him off, even at romantic operas at La Scala, and he never quite trusts Vincenzo Argenta, Luigi's father, who was widowed early, after the birth of Maria's younger sister Primavera (away, in Manchester, at Royal Northern)
3. Michael and Maria write to each other when he returns to the family home in Lancaster (where he sings in a church choir), before completing his degree
4. A year or so on, Maria is visiting Primavera in Manchester (who chose to stay there, despite giving up on becoming a professional singer) and, to see Maria again, Michael (who has never met Primavera) is invited to a party that she is throwing in Maria's honour
5. Primavera works there in music publishing, and Michael works for a company that makes travel arrangements for musicians
6. Unknown to Michael, Maria and Vincenzo (who is also visiting, but not in evidence at the party) contrive for Primavera and him to meet early on at the party (of which Primavera is also unaware), and bewitch them both with love-potions
7. The effect is such that they abandon their wontedly cautious behaviour and disappear to the roof-garden, where they kiss and pet heavily, then return to the party separately
8. As the party continues, so does the effect of the love-philtres, and Primavera (having told Maria how struck she is on Michael) manages to suggest privately that Michael should stay the night, who, without his usual level of reserve, agrees
9. One of the last to leave, Maria had earlier seemed to slip out of the party and to have brought back a chilled bottle of a quality Italian sparkling wine for Primavera (and Michael), but, in fact, she gets the bottle from Vincenzo, and lets him in (to hide in the roof-garden ?), when she returns, as the bottle will knock Primavera and Michael out soon after they take it to bed, and, when Vincenzo has seen that they are unconscious, he will let Maria back in, who rapes Michael to orgasm while he watches / listens next door, afterwards emptying away all but a small residue in each glass (and leaving the empty bottle, as if the couple had consumed its contents)
10. FF through a montage or other telling of Primavera's being mortified that she does not remember the vigorous love-making, without protection, that proves to have made her pregnant, and that, although Michael also does not have any conscious memory of that first time, he seems never to find her or her love-making exciting, and yet they marry and stay together because of their son Dario, with only the distant attentions of his grandfather and apparent uncle, except for family visits
11. The suggestion that, although they are a couple out of duty, they do not even find themselves blessed by Dario (or vice versa), and that, not just through teething, etc., they have never been able to rely on undisturbed sleep, and that they move to be near Michael's parents to have their support with childcare and a detached property where tensions with neighbours no longer arise
12. Yet tensions repeatedly happen, when Dario pesters and pesters to be allowed to play in the garden, but invariably wreaks destructive wonders on it, as soon as anyone's back is turned (which behaviourally mirrors their life with him in microcosm), so that Primavera finally asks Michael to fence off the garden and gives Dario his own patch of the garden near the house, where nothing that he plants he does not soon uproot or trample on - until three seeds are given to him by Michael's old choir-mistress, as part of Dario's Christmas present, all of which, now oddly assiduous, he feeds and waters into vigorous life, as he approaches his seventh birthday
13. Dario's screams and rages at night have finally subsided, but Michael and Primavera, driven mad by a shrieking of unidentifiable origin at night, have resorted to heavy-duty ear-plugs, which means that they are unaware that, after arriving on Dario's birthday on an early flight, Maria and Vincenzo have been greeted at the door by Dario, and proudly shown his three established plants - which so repulse and horrify Vincenzo, at some gut level, that he wrenches them out of the ground, unaware of their shrieks, and that first Maria, and then Dario, fall down dead behind him, and we see him - as if at the end of Mozart's Don Giovanni - reached for by arms and pulled down, through the patch of soil, and into Hades
ENDS
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2020
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
