The authentic Naples of Betti Pedrazzi The baroness of "É Stata la Mano di Dio" told by the shots of Eleonora D'Angelo

The rendezvous is in Naples, in front of the Mercadante Theater, on the second day of the tour of the show Tartufo. Elisabetta Pedrazzi, known by everyone as Betti, had repeated on the phone "But how can I recognize you? I've never seen you!" - «Don't worry, we will be the ones to recognize you.» Betti is that actress who, in Sorrentino's latest film, in that yellow tiled kitchen of the Schisa family, declares a stark truth, which unfortunately we have no trouble believing: «Humanity is hideous, did they tell you?» And in her straightforwardness, she presents herself the same way in reality, without any kind of frills. «You do know, that if you ask me to pose, terrible faces will start to come out? I am not capable, I don't know if you know that.... ». This is how she speaks to us, straightforwardly, with her gesticulating, tapering hands, always glued to a cigarette, whether this is a drum, an Iqos or a Camel snatched from someone. On the coffee table rests her silver cigarette case, a charm we had long forgotten: «It was my father's, I am so attached to it.»

To loosen up a bit, we sit down for a chat at the Toraldo Café, and among the first questions, she asks us, «But why did you choose me?»  We start by explaining to her who we are, our Neapolitan reality, and how you don't need a professional model to do a fashion editorial. We are looking for Italian-ness and starting from the origins of a place that is home, born with the people, among the people. Betti tells us about her embraced Naples, which she blindly trusts: «Naples is perhaps the only city that still owns something authentic. It is real, it has not changed over time amid all this fiction.» It is hard to have not seen Sorrentino's latest film The Hand of God, winner of 8 Davids, and not remember that cult scene between Baroness Focale and the very young Fabietto. We are talking about a few very intense minutes where the viewer does not seem ready to see what will happen. Perhaps no one would have been able to interpret that moment so naturally: «Between the lines of the script, I didn't even understand the physical act you can see very little or even nothing. But I understood the meaning of everything, I knew that for Fabietto (Filippo Scotti) I would be a simple principle, what he needed to see a future.»

At one point, just as in one of those silent scenes that need no acting outline, Spotify chooses for us Mi sei scoppiato dentro il cuore (You burst inside my heart), and Betti, exactly behind Eleonora's steady lens gets very emotional. For a moment, an eclipse of emotions covers those clicks, leaving us all listening, facing Betti's intense face that is not afraid of our eyes upon her, because the memory of an important person is speaking to her. Switching songs the rhythm picks up, like a change of scene, dress, or character. A stage curtain reopens. The smoke of cigarettes becomes more intense, like a dragging soul keeping her company. She cannot separate herself from it, such that she even smokes on stage, sharing with us about that funny time when that cursed cigarette did not light up. Then we move to Piazza Plebiscito, to the curious crowd that recognizes her and asks if-she-is-that-actress, and we dress her in denim with rubberized Y/Project mules while she walks us through the colonnades, amused and completely at ease, perhaps because we, unintentionally, once again, are nothing but her audience. Thus Elisabetta Pedrazzi, known to everyone as Betti, by social now @bettipedrazzi, is an unfiltered woman, who at sixty-and-we-don't-care-how-many has put herself out there, wearing someone's shoes, someone who specifically didn't wish to tell us, showing us, perhaps, that awful humanity can sometimes provide us some surprises.

MI SEI SCOPPIATA DENTRO IL CUORE

Credits:
Art Director: Vincenzo Schioppa
Photographer: Eleonora D'Angelo
Photographer Assistant: Danilo Cautero
Stylist: Ramona Tabita
Stylist Assistant: Giovanni Tritto, Lisa Mastrapasqua
MUA: Cinzia Trifiletti
Editorial Coordinators: Elisa Ambrosetti, Edoardo Lasala