House of Shadows, titled Controra in Italy, is a supernatural thriller film written and directed by Rossella de Venuto. The film, De Venuto's directorial debut, is an Italian-Irish co-production written in English, Italian, and German. The film premiered on 10 July 2013 at the 25th Galway Film Fleadh and showed at the International Bifest in Bari and was released in Italian theaters on 5 June 2014. It stars the Irish actress Fiona Glascott, who plays Megan, an Irish artist investigating a secret hidden in the family house of her Italian husband Leo.
Cast
Fiona Glascott as Megan
Pietro Ragusa as Leo
Federico Castelluccio as Father Nicola
Bianca Nappi as Pia
Marcello Prayer as Michele
Salvatore Lazzaro as Monsignor Domenico
Ray Lovelock as Father von Galen
Yvonne De Carlo as Mrs. Howard
Synopsis
Megan, a successful Irish artist, lives in Dublin with her husband Leo, an Italian architect who emigrated there several years ago. After receiving the news of the death of Leo's uncle, Monsignor Domenico, a powerful Catholic priest whose death has prompted a campaign for his beatification, the couple travels to Apulia, in southern Italy, to handle Leo's unexpected inheritance: the ancient family palace.
Leo intends to sell the house to his brother Nicola, the town priest, and return to Dublin. Megan is enchanted by the Mediterranean surroundings and the house's decadent beauty. Meanwhile, Leo reconnects with his old friends and rediscovers a world that he had almost forgotten. Left alone at home, during the hottest hours of the summer afternoon, called the controra, Megan is disturbed by mysterious presences. While trying to understand, she finds in the palace clues to an unsolved mystery linked to Leo's family. The shadows guide her to the true story of Monsignor Domenico's past. She shares what she discovers with Father von Galen, a priest sent by the Vatican to investigate Domenico as part of the beatification process. At the same time, Leo is haunted as well by the memories of a traumatic past he had blocked out of his mind.
Production
De Venuto came up with the idea for the movie as a little girl. Born in Trentino in north Italy, she used to spend her summer holidays in Apulia. She was fascinated by the old stories and legends told about the controra to prevent the children from going out during that time. She states:
"Controra" is a term used in southern Italy to indicate a precise moment of the day: it is the early afternoon, the hour when the shadows of the dead appear to contact the living. For this reason, right after lunch, local people close themselves at home to rest. It is very warm, crickets sing and streets are desert. After having experienced this and having heard the scary stories by locals, I wanted to learn more and I found that there was an extensive literature about these believes. These start already in the Greek mythology, and are maintained alive in the existing popular culture and have been well investigated by contemporary researchers such as Roger Caillois with his illuminating book Les Démon de Midi".
De Venuto was influenced by Italian horror movies from the 1970s and the 1980s such as Pupi Avati's The House with Laughing Windows, as well as Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, Alejandro Amenabar's The Others, and Hideo Nakata's Ring. The movie combines a Gothic Mediterranean setting and local myths with themes like the strict code of silence of the typical Italian family of the 1940s and of the Catholic church, and subverts genre expectations by setting a horror story.
De Venuto worked on several drafts of the script over the years before teaming up with Italian author Francesco Piccolo to craft the final version. The Italian production company Interlinea Films produced the film with the Ireland's Ripple World Pictures and Italy's Barter TV. Filming in Dublin, Apulia, and South Tyrol (in Missiano, Brixen, Bolzano and Ritten) for six weeks and completed in July 2013. De Venuto partnered with Irish director of photography Ciaran Tanham for the shooting and most of the crew members were Irish as well. The movie was supported by the Irish Film Board, the Apulia Film Commission, the Business Location Südtirol Film Fund, the Regione Lazio Film Fund, Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, the National Film Fund, and the Italian tax credit provided by law 24/12/2007 n. 244.