A selection at Venice Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival, Emanuele Crialese’s 1970s-set, Penélope Cruz-starring drama L’immensità opened in theaters earlier this summer from Music Box Films. Now, with the film arriving digitally today, we’re pleased to exclusively debut an alternate poster inspired by Federico Fellini classic. Along with the poster debut, we’re delighted to give away 10 digital codes to watch the film on AppleTV. To enter, sign up for The Film Stage’s free newsletter by July 16 (available to U.S. readers only).
Designed by Greenlight Creative, here’s their statement about the new poster: “The La Dolce Vita-inspired poster for L’immensità evolved out of the original design explorations for the film’s theatrical poster. We were looking to find a design style that would place the film in a vibrant mid-century or ’70s period setting, communicate a bittersweet, nostalgic tone, and provide a star platform for Penélope Cruz. A lot of the early press around L’immensità made comparisons to Cruz’s performance carrying on the legacy of classic Italian movie sirens like Sophia Loren, so it was interesting to conceptualize a contemporary Penélope Cruz being given the Sophia Loren-treatment via a 1960s-style Italian movie poster.
They added, “The title of the film, L’immensita (The Immensity) also somewhat evoked the existential, cultural implications at play in La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life), and the vibrance and movement of Cruz’s performance in L’immensità immediately lent itself to parallels with the iconic image of Anita Ekberg in the fountain from the classic La Dolce Vita poster. Our early explorations ended up being too referential to the original La Dolce Vita image to work on their own terms as the theatrical poster for the film’s release, but we were still charmed by the result, and perhaps the idea that our new film and Penelope’s performance in it are continuing the lineage of indelible 20th-century Italian cinema.”
See the poster below and read our interview with Cruz here.
Here’s the original iconic poster for reference:
Jose Solis said in his review, “In films like Volver, Parallel Mothers, Everybody Knows, and now L’immensità, Penélope Cruz has cornered the market on playing mother figures that are both larger than life and movingly earthy. As Clara, the loving Spaniard expatriate trying to raise her children while staying married to an unfaithful man in 1970s Rome, Cruz does some of the best work of her already incredible, multilingual career. To say director Emanuele Crialese’s camera falls in love with Cruz would be an understatement. She is lovingly shot and framed (even her Sophia Loren bob brings attention to her expressive eyes) and we don’t even need to hear her speak to know whoever’s gaze she’s under has completely fallen under her spell.”
L’immensità is now available digitally and will arrive on Blu-ray/DVD on September 12.