Ancarani constructs a story not lacking in irony and turns the apartment into a far more fascinating place than it actually is.

With skilful lighting and excellent sound design – created by Mirco Mencacci who mixed voices of the dead and ambient sounds – and occupied by two people in flesh and blood, plus a “stone guest”, both apartment and story come to life. Some parts feature insistent shots and slow camera panning, taking on pictorial qualities that bring out the yellows, greens and reds in what can be interpreted as almost Pop or even quasi-Renaissance effects, depending on your preferred visual repertoire.

The word sèance defines an attempt to communicate with the spirits and Ancarani tells the story of a strange séance held in the Mollino house-museum.

The “custodian” of the Mollino house-museum, Fulvio Ferrari, has recreated the apartment piece by piece and opened it to scholars in 2000. Dressed now in white and with a vaguely priestly air, he vacuums the floor, irons the white hand-monogrammed tablecloth and lays the table. Here, we see Ancarani’s irony – a séance must not be taken too seriously.

It then all starts from a very low angle beneath the dining table resting on columns to demonstrate that we really are here, in the architect’s apartment.

With the scene set, we then see a close-up of a woman’s face, a psychologist playing both herself and Mollino. She speaks to the architect’s spirit.

The psychologist has actually been invited to dinner; this is the excuse that drew her to the house-museum so that Ancarani could film the séance.

So, the “custodian” reappears dressed as a waiter and fills her plate with ravioli and sauce. The table is laid for two but just one plate is filled; the other is covered and remains empty: spirits don’t eat, of course!

Don Juan and his stone guest are well suited to the situation and, to some degree, to Mollino who sought out many women in real life. The torment and solitude of Mollino/Don Juan surface in the psychologist’s words as she says that only art, the oeuvre, is stable while sentimental relationships are not. Can we contradict him?

Before the showing, Fulvio Ferrari, assisted by his son, explains the history and interpretation of the house, from the floors to the curtains. Carlo Mollino never lived there and Ferrari says it was the house of the “Warrior’s Rest”. Ferrari believes it is linked to Mollino’s reflections on the afterlife, inspired by Ancient Egyptian philosophy and his own passion for the occult. So, the bedroom has a single sleigh-bed, blue carpet and butterflies. Every detail is explored and linked to this ancient concept of the afterlife.

But, how can we forget that, the very years when Mollino was constructing this apartment – between 1960 and 1968 – witnessed the release of a film directed by Roger Vadim entitled Warrior’s Rest (1962), with Brigitte Bardot and based on an eponymous novel by Christiane Rochefort published in France in 1958. It was a part of the culture of the period and, back then, prompted a certain debate on the novel, its characters and the film. The novel narrates the difficult relationship betwen a writer – the intellectual – and a middle-class girl; it is a love story founded on sex and lack of understanding.