Two young people make their way to a beach on a dark, chilly day. They sit in the sand, sip beer, and watch the waves crash and lap at the cold shore. Without saying anything, they understand one another. There is a peacefulness in that kind of relationship. You don’t have to say anything in order to understand what the other is thinking or feeling–that’s a tangible quality of being young that sometimes slips away as we get older. Aldo Iuliano’s Live Action Short contender, Dive, sits on the precipice between a time when anything seems possible and when we are forced to confront a unforgiving, violent world.
Roman and Julia share a romantic spark. Is there time together on the beach a date? A reunion? Underneath the sand, we see the top of a landmine, but we don’t see these characters see them peeking up into the sun. Iuliano puts it into the back of our minds as their meeting continues, but Iuliano was more interested in telling a story that carried a lot of meaning without much dialogue.
“I tried to tell a very simple story,” Iuliano says. “Especially in this time, we need to come back to simple things, especially in our feelings. I tried to reflect that in my structure. When you know someone that you love, when you share love with someone, you don’t need words. I tried to think about how you spend all of your time with one person and put that into a film.”
Because Iuliano was so cummunicative with his two actors, he was able to achieve an ease with them on screen. We sense their history and their desire for one another. They capture a youthful energy that some major, feature films fail to do because they don’t trust the relationship. When you are young, you sometimes want to focus on your own life and you resist the notion that major world events are creeping up your shores.
“I decided to shoot this short when I found my actors,” he says. “They have been real friends for six years, and there was something about their smiles and their moments together–I love their connection. I spent a lot of time with them speaking about their private lives and their dreams, and they told me that they have difficulties coming back to Ukraine. We talked and talked and talked–not about the story but about their relationship. I wanted to make a real contrast between the world outside, but I wanted to keep that out of frame. If you watch the film again, you will find that the war is very far away.”
When Roman and Julia run into the water, they pluge themselves so deep that we feel like we are in another world. The blues and blacks swirl around them as they flirt even underwater, Julia yanking down the back of Roman’s shorts. Despite the difficulty of shooting underwater, Iuliano captures something pure between them, and the lighting is gorgeous. The light from above illuminates their bodies and we can even see tiny bubbles clutching to their eyebrows and cheeks. Elsa Lila’s rendition of “Mallëngjimi” adds a haunting quality to this romance (listen to it here). It starts of smooth and languid as this pair finds each other under the water’s surface, but it becomes louder as the film concludes.
“I was shocked when I heard that people were continuing to go to this beach in Odesa,” Iuliano says. “They will take their umbrellas and lay in the sun, and I think that’s dangerous. I was watching all of these videos and speaking with my actors, Danylo [Kamenskyi] and Veronika [Lukanyenko], who I consider friends now. They came from Kiev to Italy to study acting. I tried to capture that shock of being there, even though they know the danger, especially with the audio. This nature is beautiful even when you contrast it to war, and people want to continue their normal lives.”
When we go underwater, I wanted to start by going deeply inside friendship and love. That’s the point. I was in Capri at this beautiful exhibition of Anton Dieffenbach, and I quickly sent a photo to Daniel [Cipri], my director of photography]. I loved the blacks and I loved the blues–the blacks of the situation but the blue of the water. It was difficult to shoot underwater, so we decided to do it like an old movie in a swimming pool–Buster Keaton is the camera. If you can’t move the camera, you move the actor. I spent a lot of time with them to build a dance. These two bodies feel that attraction and then dance together. When you’re underwater, though, I can’t talk to the actors, so I let them be free–I tried to paint with the camera. You can prepare as much as you want, but it can be impossible to manage–that’s like life. Life happens, cinema happens.”
As the film ends, we realize that forces have invaded the shore. It doesn’t just recall Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but of any war that stripped the innocence from the world’s youth. Iuliano doesn’t need to explain anything to us–we feel it in our core. That alarming fear, that inevitability that we must confront the real world.
“We were all teenagers, and, for me, they are innocent like the dog at the beginning. You can hear the dog at the end. A lot of people assume that because of the violence that they do die. I’ve spoken to a lot of people about it after screeninings, but we do see their footprints at the end. It’s unacceptable that the innocent die. We need peace to imagine a future. All of us.”
