Edoardo Ponti Between Strangers Interview 10/7/02

By Louis B. Hobson - Calgary Sun
    When Edoardo Ponti arrived on the Toronto set of his wistful drama Between Strangers last year, he was definitely no stranger to one of his film's leading ladies. His mother, Sophia Loren, was playing Olivia, the emotionally and artistically stifled wife of a crippled former star athlete (Pete Postlethwaite).
    Ponti, 29, wrote Olivia with his mother in mind, but he didn't tell her that until he'd polished the screenplay enough that he felt it would impress her. Loren, 68, is one of cinema's great icons, but Ponti was understandably not intimidated.
    "She is not an icon to me. She is my mother. We have always enjoyed a strong, trusting, loving relationship and that carried over into this new director and actress relationship we forged on the set of Between Strangers," he says in a phone interview from Los Angeles.
    Olivia is one of three women undergoing a traumatic life change in Between Strangers. The other two women are played by Mira Sorvino and Deborah Kara Unger.
    "I filmed each of the stories separately and started with Olivia's. What I learned working with my mother, I carried over to the other two actresses."
    Ponti's father is the legendary Italian director Carlo Ponti, yet he insists, "I was not raised on film sets or mingling with film people. That's not at all the kind of family we were. We socialized outside the showbiz world. If my mother was working on a film during one of my Christmas or summer vacations, I would visit her."
    Ponti says he stumbled on the idea for Between Strangers three years ago.
    "I was in Geneva just walking when I noticed three women sitting at a table. They weren't communicating. It even looked to me as if they didn't know each other but had been forced to share the table. It was an image that stuck with me and I began formulating the three stories that would have made up their lives."
    Between Strangers is Ponti's first film yet he was able to cast it with an international cast that also includes Malcolm McDowell, Gerard Depardieu and Klaus Maria Brandauer.
    "I didn't have any real credentials, so I had to meet with each of the actors and convince them they should trust me and my vision. Once I had signed two or three of them, it was a little easier to get the others. Actors want to work with certain people."
    Ponti says he is putting the finishing touches on his next script which he hopes to begin shooting in Morocco next year.