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Duse

Play trailer Poster for Duse 2025 2h 3m Biography Drama History Play Trailer Watchlist
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After decades on stage, Eleonora Duse looks back on a legendary career that seems to have run its course. But in the savage days between World War I and the rise of Fascism, the Divine Duse heeds a call stronger than any resignation and returns to where her life began: the stage. It is not only the desire to act that drives her, but a deep urgency: the need to reaffirm herself in a world that is inexorably changing and that threatens to take everything away from her, including the financial independence she has won with her life's work. Once again, Eleonora chooses theater as the only refuge for truth and resistance. Armed only with her art, she defies time and disenchantment, transforming every word and every gesture into a revolutionary act. But the price of holding up beauty against the brutality of power and history is high. Relationships seem to dissolve, and her health worsens. Yet Eleonora will face her last journey convinced that one can give up life itself, but never one’s true nature.

Critics Reviews

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Sophie Monks Kaufman Little White Lies The film unfolds via a series of vignettes that have a tendency to go into convoluted details, labouring every beat of meandering conversations between peripheral characters. Sep 3, 2025 Full Review Blake Simons IndieWire It is hard to understand someone or grow sympathy for them when they won't stop yelling at you, and when all the world's a maximalist stage for the ensemble of "Duse," an emotional response is hard to elicit. Rated: C+ Sep 3, 2025 Full Review Marshall Shaffer Slant Magazine For Pietro Marcello, the only responsible art in times of need is a responsive art. Rated: 3/4 Sep 3, 2025 Full Review Leonardo Goi The Film Stage If his late-life tribute to a legendary artist is spared from the museological qualities of other dramas of its ilk, it still keeps its heroine and her world shrouded in mystery. Sep 6, 2025 Full Review Damon Wise Deadline Hollywood Daily Built around an all-in performance by Tedeschi, who repeatedly seems on the brink of going full Nicolas Cage but always pulls back at the last moment, Duse is an enjoyable but somewhat opaque take on an enigmatic Italian legend. Sep 4, 2025 Full Review Mia Pflüger AwardsWatch [Duse isn't] the daring anti-biopic Marcello seems to have envisioned, but a muddled, uneven work, at times accidentally comic, at times suffocating, at times fleetingly profound. Rated: C- Sep 3, 2025 Full Review Read all reviews

Cast & Crew

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Pietro Marcello

Director

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi

Actor

Noémie Merlant

Actor

Fanni Wrochna

Actor

Fausto Russo Alesi

Actor

Edoardo Sorgente

Actor
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Duse

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Movie Info

Synopsis After decades on stage, Eleonora Duse looks back on a legendary career that seems to have run its course. But in the savage days between World War I and the rise of Fascism, the Divine Duse heeds a call stronger than any resignation and returns to where her life began: the stage. It is not only the desire to act that drives her, but a deep urgency: the need to reaffirm herself in a world that is inexorably changing and that threatens to take everything away from her, including the financial independence she has won with her life's work. Once again, Eleonora chooses theater as the only refuge for truth and resistance. Armed only with her art, she defies time and disenchantment, transforming every word and every gesture into a revolutionary act. But the price of holding up beauty against the brutality of power and history is high. Relationships seem to dissolve, and her health worsens. Yet Eleonora will face her last journey convinced that one can give up life itself, but never one’s true nature.
Director
Pietro Marcello
Producer
Carlo Degli Esposti, Nicola Serra, Marco Grifoni, Benedetta Cappon
Screenwriter
Letizia Russo, Guido Silei, Pietro Marcello
Production Co
Palomar, Avventurosa
Genre
Biography, Drama, History
Original Language
Italian
Runtime
2h 3m