‘Duse’ Viennale Review: Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi Channels the Grande Dame of Italian Theater

Deciding where to place the focus when making a biographical film—especially about a celebrity—is never simple. A full sweep through someone’s career can end up feeling like a “greatest hits” of a life, while narrowing in on one specific moment or episode can seem like an arbitrary choice that prevents a full understanding of the person. Personally, I tend to prefer the latter kind of portrait: they’re more concrete, coherent, driven by specific ideas, and less likely to turn into what often feels like a filmed Wikipedia entry.

That’s the path Italian filmmaker Pietro Marcello takes in portraying early 20th-century stage legend Eleonora Duse. But unlike other biopics that zero in on a particular period of artistic glory (like the recent one on Bob Dylan’s early New York days or the upcoming Bruce Springsteen film set during the making of a single album), Marcello chooses to depict Duse at the twilight of her career, when she’s already— or at least appears to be—retired from public life. Not that she was ever fully part of it to begin with.

The film assumes a familiarity with Duse that many viewers might not have, and though some critics saw this as a flaw, it really isn’t one. Simply watching Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s stylized, melodramatic performance—teetering between overacting and pathos—is enough to convey that this is a Grande Dame of the stage. And that’s exactly what she is. Or was, since at the start of the film she’s in retirement, occasionally performing for soldiers returning from World War I.

But her brief return to the stage reignites something in her, leading to more performances and eventually an ambitious comeback. It begins triumphantly, with a successful production of Ibsen, but soon unravels for several reasons. Her fraught relationship with her daughter (Noémie Merlant) resurfaces, as does her complicated past with poet and playwright Gabriele D’Annunzio (Fausto Russo Alesi), with whom she embarks on a tour that brings their tensions back to the surface.

And that’s not all. Two more shadows hang over her final years: her failing health—she’s short of breath, constantly coughing, eventually dependent on a kind of respirator—and her mounting financial troubles, which push her to keep performing and to cross paths with a much darker figure rising in the political scene of the early 1920s, one whose nickname sounds uncomfortably close to her own. You can probably guess who that is.

For all its specificity, the screenplay—co-written by Marcello with Letizia Russo and Guido Silei—is among the director’s most classical and, in a sense, conventional works. That impression is reinforced by the film’s intense melodramatic acting style, fully embraced by both the cast and the filmmaker. Still, Marcello retains one of his trademarks: a semi-documentary touch, weaving in archival images that reflect the social and political atmosphere of the time and contextualize the parallel paths of Duse’s personal and professional lives.

The arrival of another theatrical icon, Sarah Bernhardt (played with appropriate pomp by Noémie Lvovsky), adds yet another dramatic layer. The film reaches its most powerful moments in the second half, as Duse’s health deteriorates, her work falters, her relationships wither (both with D’Annunzio and her daughter), and a dangerous lifeline emerges—one that traps her, unexpectedly, between vanity and survival.

Bruni-Tedeschi’s performance will either mesmerize or irritate, depending on the viewer. I found it consistent with Marcello’s tone and with what’s expected of a character like Eleonora Duse: grand, tragic, and volatile. It’s her performance that sustains the film as it grows heavier and darker with each passing minute. A drama about the complex, often perilous intersections between art, life, and politics, Duse feels surprisingly current in how it confronts vanity, decline, pain, and the manipulations of those with other agendas in mind.