“Diotima” by Pasquale Corrado

Being a director is very hard. Practice requires a lot of time, money, investments and hard work. It is very hard, in a place like Italy, to properly fulfill our goals and ideas about the movies we want to do, because sometimes we start from nothing and we have no way of reaching good professionals, nice actors or funds for our movies.

“Diotima” is a very interesting work from a 23-year-old young italian director which has some nice direction ideas since the very first frame: the title sequence, representing a little mouse as it goes through the sewer system into the bed of the female protagonist, makes us think of the title sequences from acclaimed directors of the 80’s. This short movie is full of well-staged dream sequences and it has a very nice soundtrack that emphasizes the right scenes with a subtle thriller mood.

What keeps this short from actually express its potential is a very amateurish cinematography that couldn’t actually create a believable mood: lights are always very hard on the subjects and they look artificial and cheap. Acting is also not very convincing: from the choice of all the faces to their actual performance.

Overall, we think that this young director has all the potential to stage very good films with good taste, flow and pace, and we sincerely hope that many others will be able to see these abilities though this short movie, giving him credit and helping him to reach a crew and cast of professionals that will help him with his next work.