What made you address the various issues (body image, mothers-in-law, a daughter losing her virginity, jealousy with an ex, sexting a lover, etc.) that were revealed in Perfect Strangers? Did you have the 7 sins in mind? It’s interesting that money, which is usually an issue for couples, wasn’t one of the topics of concern in the film. In the architecture of screenplay I wanted to have these revelations little by little but in a very constant way, so we get to know the characters better, but also to change our perceptions of these characters.
I think in a film where you have a unity of time and place it’s important to have a very quick rhythm. What decisions did you make regarding what would be revealed about the characters before, during, and after dinner? The characters were chosen based on the underlying themes that I wanted to explore. One may be rich, one poor, one might have a good job or not, etc….I really wanted to address diversity in the film, and to have all possible types-a gay character, a married couple with children. Their lives may have gone in completely different directions. Adult friends still hang out with classmates from elementary school. One of the things that is typical of Italian friendships is how deeply rooted they are in time. I wanted the group to be a cross-section of friends and an Italian set of friends. What parameters did you have in mind to create the characters? They broke up before he left the hospital.
I had a pair of friends where the guy was in a motorcycle accident and when his wife went to get him from the hospital, they gave her his cell phone, and she found a text message. I’ve known various couples, but one in particular was a starting point for the film. How did you come up with the idea for this film? Do you know couples that have split up because they have looked at their partner’s phones/texts? Genovese met with Film International during the Tribeca Film festival where the film received its international premiere, to talk about his film. The seven friends-three married couples and a single but dating guy-may think they have nothing to hide-but then the phone rings…
Paolo Genovese’s cheeky comedy-drama Perfect Strangers operates on the simplest-and perhaps riskiest-of principles: if our phones are all “black boxes of information” about us, is there anything in them that could possibly embarrass us in front of our spouses and dearest friends who know us so well? The answer, not surprisingly, is a resounding yes, as the characters in this nifty little morality play play a game in which all calls and texts at a dinner party are to become public knowledge.