Laura Pausini has wondered for years what her life would be like if she hadn’t won the Sanremo Festival in 1993 that made her famous at the age of 18. Would you be happier in anonymity? Would you also feel accomplished?
These questions were the source of her first film, “Laura Pausini – Piacere di conoscerti” (“Laura Pausini – Nice to meet you”), which is released Thursday on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories.
The Italian pop star is put in front of the cameras for the first time for a feature film “autofiction” by mixing experiences of his professional and private life (some unpublished) with fictitious circumstances. The project comes a year after his first flirtation with cinema, as co-author of the theme “Io sì” for the film “La vita davanti a sé” (“The life before you”), earned him a nomination Oscar for best original song and a Golden Globe with Diane Warren.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s true that in the last two, three years, I feel like cinema has come closer to me, because I haven’t really gone looking for it,” Pausini said in a recent Rome interview, recalling that for “Io Sí” it was Sophia Loren who wanted her to be the voice of his film and Amazon Studios approached her several times about the possibility. to work together.
In February 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic quarantined Italy, he woke up one night with the idea and wrote the story that would later become “Nice to meet you” on his phone.
“People constantly live thinking that whoever wins has conquered the world, whoever is the best at his job has conquered everything, he has achieved it. But in reality that night, while writing this story, I realized that it wasn’t like that, that maybe that’s exactly why I was right to have this experience.
He said he would never have dared to play a fictional character: “It scares me, I don’t feel comfortable.” But that showing up as he is in a hypothetical situation felt more honest and fun.
The hour and 20-minute film, written by Ivan Cotroneo and Monica Rametta and directed by Cotroneo, shows the ‘La Soledad’ and ‘Amores Extranas’ singer reminiscing about her childhood steps and imagining for the premiere times what could have happened had she not had the luck and perseverance to live the life of a global artist who has sold over 70 million records.
It’s not that she’s unhappy with her life, the 47-year-old superstar said. “I am extremely happy and proud of this life that I have and I love everything that I have, even though it has revolutionized my plans,” he said. But “sometimes, by character, I am melancholy, and having dreamed of other things for so many years, it is normal for me to think about what it would be like not to be famous”.
What did you learn about yourself while doing this project? “Personally, I haven’t discovered anything that I didn’t already know. But first I made this film so that my daughter would know who her mother is and what it means to be happy and proud of yourself, whether you succeed or not, and whether you win or lose,” said Pausini, who in the film is the mother of a son, not a daughter, and she owns a ceramics store.
As an example, she cited that her personal achievement was not winning a Golden Globe, but choosing to sing that song and being able to perform it however she wanted. “As I was shooting (the movie), I realized that this movie probably wasn’t dedicated to her alone,” he continued. “If this message can reach the people who love me and who follow my career, I would love to, because today everything is only fame, just ‘I like’, just that the face is known, and I think that the main value of being human does not come from there, it is not the goal”.