'There Is No Love In Naples' Tropico

Enea Colombi directs ‘There Is No Love In Naples’ for Tropico.

The chronicles of toxic relationships.

Words from Enea below.

What were the first images you had in mind for this video?

I had so many images in mind for this video, I let myself be carried away by the melody of the songs and I tried to give order and meaning to the dream images and the more real ones, the only thing I was sure of was that I wanted to create a universe narrative suspended in time and space, which may be both real and surreal at the same time, where the protagonists are the only living beings for the whole film, they are left to themselves becoming victims to a self-destructive mechanism.

I wanted to create a universe narrative suspended in time and space, which may be both real and surreal at the same time.

What was the technical setup?

The technical setup was quite light, the camera was a Red Gemini with a set of Cooke Panchro and a 12mm Laowa, we didn’t have any lights on set similar to my previous video, ‘Carlito’s Way’ (below). It’s an approach that I really like and I feel it’s part of my poetic narrative, we spent many days scouting and planning the shoot based on the daylight.

The other source of light was from the screen of the smartphone, in a film where the light is completely natural, inserting an artificial light source, like the phone display, allowed us to create a greater feeling of alienation. A fun fact is that the only scene that we did use an artificial light was created by using a cellar lamp luckily found in the house we were shooting in.

‘There Is No Love In Naples’ Tropico

Could you tell us about working with rain and fire?

Working with fire is always an experience that puts you in a certain agitation, both on a human level towards the stuntmen and on a technical level on set – you know you cannot shoot the scene as many times as you want and there’s a physical limit. We did many rehearsals without fire and perfectly calculated the meeting points and the camera movements before shooting the scene.

‘There Is No Love In Naples’ Tropico

The rain was captured in camera but is not real, the father of a friend is a farmer and allowed us to use one of his giant plantation sprinklers. He moved it in the direction we preferred, the jet was really powerful and allowed us to recreate rain in a lighting condition opposite to what you’d expect. As a child, I often played under these huge jets and I was finally able to fulfill the dream of shooting and reconnecting to my childhood.

What are you reading at the moment?

‘Fantasy Books’ by Gianni Rodari, a collection of tales and doggerel illustrated by Bruno Munari.