There is a powerful simplicity running throughout Marco Perego’s gorgeous film Dovecote, even though the feelings become almost overwhelming. In this nearly wordless film, Perego invites us on a sensory experience as we follow one woman’s final moments before being released from a still-functioning women’s prison on the island of Giudecca in Venice. If someone is confined in a prison, can they deal with those walls becoming invisible when they are released? Will someone be treated fairly once they have become free again? Perego’s film is full of stark beauty and palpable fears and joys.
Perego brings us into his film via gondola, as the morning sun threatens to rise and break the sapphire sky. Once we enter the prison, the color is drained, and the black-and-white cinematography subconsciously reminds us of good and bad, lightness and darkness. When we meet characters in prisons, our first thoughts drift to how they landed here, but Perego isn’t interested in that. This is a film about humanity and freedom.
Dovecote Short Film Asks ‘What is Freedom?’
“The first question we asked all these inmates was, ‘What is freedom?'” Perego reveals. “Ninety percent of these women were talking about how sometimes they felt more freedom inside the prison than outside. When they told me this, I immediately wondered how to approach this as a director. If I am creating this different dialogue between the inside and the outside, I decided that the outside would be entirely shot in a four-by-three frame with an almost claustrophobic feeling. Inside, the lens is very big, and there’s only one take. I wanted to reverse it where the audience would feel trapped, and I wanted to pose this question: Are you sure that freedom is on the outside or the inside?”
Zoe Saldaña plays a prisoner who is about to be released, and we follow her as she says goodbye and ties up loose ends. I have always admired how Saldaña uses her entire body in every performance, and we see the tension between fear, excitement, and heartbreak fighting to break on her face. She didn’t approach her character any differently than when she works on a feature, and developing that backstory–even if its withheld from us–remained important to her.
“I live more in the backstory than anything else,” Saldaña says. “I knew that Marco was going to be inclined to shave everything off and that way it gives us a better opportunity to find these characters relatable even though, on the surface, we will feel like we can’t relate to them. In that tender moment between my character and the woman I am saying goodbye to, you don’t know their story, but you know the goodbye is profound. Whether they became sisters, whether they are lovers, whether one is a surrogate daughter, you don’t know. We had specific ideas about everything even though we don’t spell it out. Marco was not being vague to be mysterious but undertanding the more time we spent with these women; the best way we can tell their story is by giving you a feeling and respecting their privacy.”
When Saldaña says goodbye to that young woman, she receives a sweater, and she immediately brings it to her nose and inhales the fabric. We have all relied on the comfort of the smell of something, and it makes us fearful if that smell were ever to disappear. How would we clutch onto those immediate memories once that sensory experience is taken from us?
“If a kiss was going to be so obvious that, all of a sudden, it kills the moment or it completely makes you hyper-focused on that moment it might not allow you to be as invested in the rest of the story,” she says. “I am governed by my senses. Maybe there is a little bit of on the spectrum for a lot of us, that are this way that have sensory, modulatory kind of particularities. I lost my father when I was nine, but I remember a sweater that for many, many years would smell like his cologne. One day you smell it, and you realize that that has gone away. I felt like I smelled it out or wore it so much. Marco didn’t want me to kiss her, and I remember one take the lines weren’t lining up, and we had to work through it. The actress was so compelling and we gave each other so much with the little time that we had, and that small moment was really powerful for both of us.”
Sometimes Goodbyes are Forever
Perego hits home that the goodbyes are, sometimes, forever. We don’t know when or if these women will be joined together again, so the final moments truly matter.
“I remember on the first day on set, and our writer, Alex [Dinalaris], was talking about the last day you will ever see this person again,” Perego says. “This might be the last day you ever see this person. You’re saying goodbye to your family and before you leave, you have to confront the idea that you don’t know if you will come back. We discussed that note a lot, and that’s a very visceral, deep feeling.”
Dovecote‘s setting is a working prison and the people inhabiting the space are really serving time. When the women look directly at the camera, their gaze takes hold of you. Perego guides his camera with such care, intent, and purpose, and Saldaña commented on how his generosity was received and given back to him.
“I wasn’t there the first day, but Marco would tell me about how they were a bit shy,” Saldaña says. “By the next day, they were sort of sharing how excited they were and how Marco was a nice person who was going to do them justice. By the third day of pre-production, they were giving Marco notes and making little souvenirs for him to give to his kids or to give to me. By the time I met them, they were so warm with me, and it felt like they and Marco had created this energy that was filled with trust and safety.”
Saldaña’s character retrieves her items before she walks out the door. She puts on a large coat and takes a few personal belongings, but curiously, she leaves a cross in the box. It’s a quick moment, but it makes us wonder if there was a shift while she spent her time inside. I even considered that it wasn’t hers to begin with–maybe it was given to her by someone before she found herself serving time.
“I don’t think she’s a non-believer,” Saldaña admits. “I felt that a cycle was broken or that she’s going to break a cycle of something–I don’t know what that means. With the first couple of takes, I was feeling that feeling of abandonment. She has been left by someone or something, and she wasn’t going to carry it along with her anymore. There was a representative from the Vatican that read the script beforehand, and they weren’t there to enforce something. They wanted to have a form of presence at the Biennale to use good causes and create opportunities for artists. They didn’t find the script insulting or anything, but that moment was powerful for all of us.”
Perego brings a wonderful stillness to every moment. Everything feels naturally captured but purposeful at the same time. It doesn’t matter if it’s a glance from someone passing by in the hallway or when we see another prisoner being brought in. What could have been a standard story of why these women got here, Perego is more interested in letting the swell of their emotional states come through.
“I love that the script explores her leaving something behind, and right after that, when Zoe is walking out, another character comes in,” Perego notes. “If you think about it, this young girl looks like a young Zoe–maybe she’s another person. You see Zoe turning back and looking up and you see her entering shadow and the light to leave. Normally, you put all the focus on your main character, but in this case, we suddenly meet another woman who is suffering a lot of pain.
When you talk about stillness, it felt like that when we were there. Every night, before I went to sleep, all these women were giving us letters and poems. It was so collaborative. There would be stillness in the corridors even with a camera, but you felt like all these women represent all the wormen around the world. There’s not just one, and that stillness was found in the emotion in the eyes.”
Dovecote Short Trailer
