Ouverture Of Something That Never Ended

In this first episode of the seven-part film collaboration between award-winning director Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Elephant) and Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, we follow main character Silvia through her eccentric morning routine at home in Rome, including a scene where she throws a dress—from Alessandro Michele's first Gucci women's show Fall Winter 2015—off her balcony, to a song by Billie Eilish. Silvia is seen sifting through her post, which reveal colorful Gucci show invitations, as well as a mysterious flyer, and then she becomes lost in a television lecture performed by writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado, until the arrival of an unexpected visitor, while a band in another room rehearses a piece of music.

In this second episode directed by Gus Van Sant and Alessandro Michele, we follow Silvia to the neighborhood café, where she meets a friend, played by Arlo Parks, the musician and poet from London. They have a meandering conversation until realising they are surrounded by others in a variety of surreal situations. Silvia’s companion leaves to head off on a sightseeing trip around Rome in a car with some friends. The return of the mysterious flyer sets in motion a journey inside a world where all is not as it seems.

At the post office to send a postcard, Silvia's day continues to unfurl in unanticipated directions. Idly eavesdropping on conversations in the line of unusually well-dressed customers, she begins to focus intently on an elegant gentleman (venerable Italian art critic Achille Bonito Oliva), who is engaged on a curious phone call with another character (singer and actor Harry Styles). The enigmatic flyer makes another appearance, this time in the form of a postage stamp. 'At The Post Office' is directed by directed by Gus Van Sant and Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele.

Our world becomes a stage in the fourth episode as Silvia arrives for an audition in a theatre together with her friend and fellow performer, played by actor and playwright Jeremy O. Harris, who offers encouragement. As the dancers warm up and get into costume backstage, Silvia and the choreographer, played by famed German dance leader Sasha Waltz, perform together to Ravel’s ‘Bolero’. A group bonding exercise on the stage with Waltz’s troupe becomes increasingly intense.

We return to the apartment where the day began, but this time meet characters in the homes surrounding, gaining a voyeuristic view into their lives, fantasies and unguarded private moments – including a painter intently cleaning her fake eyelashes, played by artist Ariana Papademetropoulos. Someone in a bathtub watches television, as a music video starring Billie Eilish fills our screens, playing in its entirety. These vignettes captured through the frames of the windows ultimately combine into a reversal of perspective, as Silvia once more takes centre stage.

On the streets of Rome, Silvia discovers a vintage shop with a neon Gucci sign in the window. As she and a diverse cast of customers begin to try on clothes from the racks, an enigmatic woman walks into the store, played by singer and songwriter Florence Welch. The visitor writes out fragments of a poem on pieces of paper, and tucks them away inside the garments.

In the final episode, featuring a cameo from Van Sant, Silvia wanders the phantasmagoric streets of Rome at night, and is drawn into a dreamlike moment involving a dress. As she reads a poem through an intercom in a street doorway, a gentleman inside the apartment, played by singer and actor Lu Han, listens while he irons and shortens a dress with a pair of scissors. After a spontaneous ride on a scooter through the nighttime streets of Rome, Silvia returns to where she began, and a walk into the night reveals the underlying nature of her reality.