Capturing A Mother’s Truth
Fashion icon Benedetta Barzini documented by gay son
KINO LORBER
Beniamino Barrese and his fashion model mother, Benedetta Barzini, as seen in Barrese’s “The Disappearance
of My Mother,” which opens at the Quad on December 6.
go of.
But Benedetta herself says of her
modeling days, “It isn’t really me
captured in a photograph” — she
is pretending to be someone for the
camera.
That concept percolates throughout
the documentary, and Barrese
acknowledged, “I think she’s totally
right. I tried to capture an approximation
of my perception of her. I
had to choose my idea of her. When
we relate to others, we show portions
of ourselves and have masks.
We have a public face — meaning
that we only behave according to
what we know. It can be profound
but limited. Benedetta says this to
empower herself. She told me, ‘This
woman in your fi lm is cool, but it’s
not me.’”
Barrese added, “This fi lm made
me scrutinize what it means to give
your image away and have it as
static forever while you are changing
— and that’s why it’s so diffi cult
to be captured in a photograph or
on fi lm.”
The elusiveness of the “real” Benny
often frustrated the fi lmmaker,
who tried to replicate his vision of
his mother.
“I did my best,” he said, “but I
didn’t manage it. I made her look
sad and angry and depressed for the
purpose of telling the story. She’s
more lighthearted in real life. She’s
right, images are a lie — they take
something and put it into a frame.
Reality is much more layered.”
Barrese talked about the unique
bond he has with his mother.
“She tells me that I’m the only
one of her kids who looks at her as
a person, not as a mother, and that
she looks at me as a person and not
a son,” he said. “So, we didn’t fall
into the stereotypical roles.”
The collaborative nature of fi lming
allowed Benedetta to have “more
of a say in what happens,” Barrese
said. “Our tension was real, and
much worse that what you see in
the fi lm.”
Despite any confl icts, the director
emphasized, he had his mother’s
support for the project.
“She knew this was my goal, and
she helped me realize it, Barrese
said. “I was a little lost. She knew I
wanted to fi nd my way back to fi lmmaking,
so this was my attempt to
do something of my own.”
He then qualifi ed that by admitting,
“But I had to mislead her about
what I was doing — she thought
the fi lm was about something else
because I kept the ‘disappearance’
from her.
At times, Barrese is seen as intrusive
in the documentary. When
Hutton visits Benedetta, Barrese is
asked not to record their reunion.
Scenes like these, he said, give viewers
a sense of the power struggle he
had with his mother over control of
the fi lm. (Some of the more amusing
moments have Benedetta “directing”
her son.)
Barrese explained that his interruption
was not what it seems to be
on fi lm.-
“I had to be intrusive and obsessive
more than I actually was,” he
said. “You have to have respect for
whoever is involved. With Lauren
Hutton, they did not let me shoot
— it looks like I’m disturbing them.
I made that meeting happen, and
they both knew I was going to fi lm
it. That’s why they were meeting!
Our agreement was that I had to
fi lm because I had arranged their
meeting. When mom was saying
‘no,’ she was breaking the deal we
had. I’m intrusive to get the truth in
front of me.”
FILM
BY GARY M. KRAMER
“The Disappearance
of My Mother”
is out gay fi lmmaker
Beniamino
Barrese’s sensitive portrait of his
mother, Benedetta Barzini, an
iconic fashion model who now disdains
the camera. When Barzini
was hired by Diana Vreeland in the
1960s, her career took off and she
hobnobbed with Andy Warhol and
other luminaries of the day. (Lauren
Hutton drops by for a visit with
“Benny,” Barzini’s nickname, in
the fi lm). But Marxist and feminist
infl uences on the model made her
question the nature of beauty, commerce,
and how women are seen
and treated in fashion and society
generally.
Barzini still participates in the
occasional fashion show, but her
son’s fi lm shows how she is planning
to escape and leave everything
and everyone behind — and is a
metaphor for the day when she will
leave him behind. Barrese lovingly
captures his mother’s elusive nature
in this highly personal documentary.
Via WhatsApp from Italy, Barrese
acknowledged that his fi lm may not
have universal appeal.
“I was trying to make a fi lm about
my mom and make a super objective,
observational, almost fi ction
fi lm about her,” he explained. The
more intimate “The Disappearance
of My Mother” was, he reasoned,
the more viewers would form a connection
with Benedetta and fi nd
“an entrance” into a relationship
with someone you love and must let
➤ DISAPPEARANCE, continued on p.35
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December 5 - December 1 34 8, 2019 | GayCityNews.com
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