To the Roman presentation of the film La Lezione, which is the protagonist, Matilda De Angelis focuses on her intervention on emotional abuse and stalking against women, central themes of the film but also of our era and of which it is essential to continue to speak, especially today that we celebrate the International Women’s Day. Because the mimosa is a beautiful symbol, but it is not enough, it is necessary to reflect and much.
“Physical violence is not noisy, it is not clear: it digs in the perception of the reality of the victim until it doubts what is true,” said Matilda De Angelis, underlining that form of abuse acting in silence, precisely for this reason, can become even more dangerous. “It is very different from that physical one,” he explains. “There is no first and after a slap, there is no first and after a black eye or a broken rib”.
The problem, the actress continues, is that this type of violence moves on the ground of perception. There is no objective fact that clearly separates what happens before and after. There is rather a conflict between versions of reality: «It is my reality against yours, my perception against yours».
That’s where manipulation finds space. “Physical violence is very subtle,” says Matilda De Angelis. “For he dug in the perception of the reality of the victim, until he brought her to doubt deeply about what is true and what is false.” According to the actress, these dynamics are often linked to affective relationships and the mechanisms typical of narcissistic abuse. A system that feeds on the empathy of the victim: his ability to understand the other, to question himself, to seek explanations.
And this is one of the central points of the film: to put in crisis the idea that there is a precise type of woman destined to fall victim to these dynamics.
“I wondered why a woman economically independent, strong, emancipated, with her own life can still become a victim of psychological abuse,” says De Angelis. The answer, he says, is as simple as uncomfortable: there is no identikit. The idea of “ predestined victim” is a cognitive bias, a reassuring way to think that certain things can only happen to others. Actually, the actress insists, it can happen to anyone. “Whoever is endowed with empathy and is willing to question his own system of thought can be found in this condition.”.
In the film, this dynamic crosses Elizabeth’s character, a seemingly solid woman who is dealing with the return of a past marked by a stalker and a growing sense of threat. But for De Angelis, history becomes above all an opportunity to reflect on what happens after abuse.
Because manipulation, he explains, often does not end with the end of the relationship. «He has very long straws in time». Many victims continue to question what they could do differently: what should I have understood before? How should I react? It is a mechanism of guilt that extends the effect of abuse even when the relationship is now over. Yet, according to the actress, there is a firm point: we cannot control the reaction of others. “Even when we do everything to perfection, we do not have control of the answer of the other”.
It is precisely from this awareness that a form of freedom is born, paradoxically. Leaving control over others means recovering control over yourself.
To explain this idea De Angelis mentions the verses of the poet Aldo Penna: “From all the prisons I lived, I owned the key.” A phrase that for her encompasses the deepest sense of history: often awareness comes only after, when the truth is reconstructed backwards. And that is precisely why, he emphasizes, “the lesson is not yet over”.
The film, very current and even more today March 8, is also an invitation to continue to talk about psychological violence, a form of abuse still too invisible.
As for his personal “lection”, De Angelis chooses a simple but radical answer: to remain faithful to himself. “There is no romance for me,” he concludes. “It’s like inside, it’s like outside.” A principle that, he says, accompanies her since she was eighteen years old: to stay exactly what she is.
L’articolo Matilda De Angelis: “Physical violence digs into the perception of reality” comes from IlNewyorkese.
