CAIRO – 28 July 2017: When I decided to watch Lisa Azuelos’s movie Dalida, I did not know what to expect exactly. Maybe some of the Italian-Egyptian singer good music, some secrets about her life and death or maybe some thrilling love stories someone like her can experience.
However, what I found in ‘Dalida’ was more than that; it was a question I used to ask myself for a long time. And though the movie didn’t give me an answer, it showed me an example for wonderful woman knew from the first moment what she wants, life took her away sometimes, but who didn’t!
The 124-minute French movie based on Dalida life story gave me the question in the very opening scene. When Dalida performed by Sveva Alviti was talking with her lover then, the Italian singer and composer Luigi Tenco played by Alessandro Borghi inside a hotel room, where they used to meet away from the intruders and paparazzi.
Tenco was telling Dalida a quote about finding balance in life, a thought she did not like; it’s wrong she told him. Furthermore she explained how it should be love what you have to search for in life without exhausting yourself of finding a way to achieve a balanced life because to her it was “meaningless.”
Is it love over balance? Is it suicide over living a life of fame? Is it jumping from a cliff over living as an ordinary person? Dalida chose I guess.
Through five love stories, difficult childhood, Dalida suffered from losing lovers, relatives and friends, the movie shows us depending on the flash back techniques. She was bullied and others decided to choose for her including her first husband and producer Lucien Morisse played by Jean-Paul Rouve who convinced her to delay her dream of becoming a mother for the sake of her career.
photo courtesy of Dalida le film Facebook page
Later, and after getting an abortion due to a brief love story with a younger man, she finds out that her dream was destroyed, and that she will never become a mother.
As the movie events were escalating you would be charmed with (Sveva Alviti) smile, who brilliantly played Dalida’s role, you would love with her, sing with her and feel her broken heart every time she finds out that one of her lovers killed himself. A small tight line between love, death and life leads her to more than one suicide attempt.
photo courtesy of Dalida le film Facebook page
Finally, when Dalida sings her famous masterpiece Je suis malade, there was no chance for you not to believe her; as you would not be surprised with her note asking for forgiveness because life has become unbearable.
Maybe Dalida’s story with Tenco was the truest to me. It was about refusing being a ‘puppet’ in the other’s hands; it’s about refusing being used for what you feel.
photo courtesy forLuigi Tenco played by Alessandro Borghi - from Dalida le film Facebook page
In the middle of his story with Dalida, Tenco feels that their producers are using their feelings and love for publicity so he feels humiliated. The amazing Alessandro Borghi expressed how a man can be struggling inside. Looking at his red-eyes as he was singing Ciao amore says everything.
Minutes later, Dalida finds him drowning in blood after shooting himself. Who would bear losing that number of lovers, even when surrounded by a huge number of fans?
After months of living a depressive life, Dalida’s final scene comes as quite as her death itself. She dresses up and tells her house keeper not to wake her up in the morning. She takes her bills, leaves a note and closes her eyes.
photo courtesy of Dalida le film Facebook page
The movie produced 2016 and screened 2017 telling Gigliotti or Dalida story comes within a list of successful list of French Biography movies; including La Vie en rose for Edith Piaf, My Way for Claude François, also known as Cloclo and Gainsbourg about Serge Gainsbourg.
Several elements came together in this movie that could have easily ruined it, such as risking with Italian Sveva Alviti to play Dalia character, the difficulty of choosing the very right costumes and maybe the length of the movie that wanted to give you everything you would like to know about your favorite singer; however all of these eventually turned to be success factors to the movie.
Finally, was that the perfect ending for a legend...? Well, was that the perfect life..? However, it was a life of a woman who chose love over balance.
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