Where it was filmed 'L'uomo dal fiore in bocca'

The film is based on a novella by Pirandello that the writer transposed into a single act. Gabriele Lavia’s version of The Man With the Flower in His Mouth takes place on a summer night inside an anonymous Sicilian train station, the same as a thousand others. Outside it is pouring with rain. The bare, dark, timeless (the clocks have no hands) space of the 1930s style waiting room was built in a hanger in the industrial area of Modugno (province of Bari) with a section of the external area featuring the platform and tracks. The minimalist set design, whose only note of colour in the prevailing grey, lit by flashes of blue from the big windows, is provided by the cheerful packages that The Customer has bought for his family, leaves space for a powerful reflection on life and death.

The use of video effects allowed for animated scenes and a virtual expansion of the set in a balanced solution that combines tradition and innovation. The space that is created, cavernous, dark and empty, welcomes two men. One (Michele De Maria) is full of life and things to do: family, work, his dreams, his hopes, his worries. The other (Gabriele Lavia), sentenced to death by a terminal illness (the flower in his mouth), listens with morbid curiosity to the story of his little life, understanding the total absence of sense, the stupidity of his illusions, the banality of his preoccupations and the pointless responsibilities represented by his “packages” that stop the man from living. So he doesn’t miss his train.