One evening, as work on “Suspiria” wound down, Guadagnino left the editing room and went to a dinner at a friend’s triplex apartment on the Tiber. “This is a great Fascist-style building,” he said, pushing open a heavy front door and crossing a marble lobby. Inside the apartment, he climbed a twisting staircase lined with plastic medical-anatomy models: body after body, all stripped bare.
In light of Guadagnino’s successes outside Italy, he has become known among the upper strata within it. The hosts that evening were Anna Federici and her husband, Roberto D’Agostino, who goes by Dago. Federici is an heiress to a family of Italian builders. Dago founded the Italian news site Dagospia—a witty, idiosyncratic blog of politics, gossip, and soft porn which Politico recently described as a “must-read for the Italian élite.” Upstairs, Dago greeted Guadagnino wearing blue-tinted sunglasses, silver jewelry, and tattoos from his fingers to his ears; his chin sported a long Vandyke. Federici wore interesting glasses and a chestnut bob framed by white.
Guadagnino accepted a glass of rosé and wandered around. The balcony glowed with blinking neon palm trees, an enormous Christ figurine, and illuminated statues of
Silvio Berlusconi and Chairman Mao. He flopped into a pink love seat of two scoop-like concave chairs made for Veuve Clicquot, reputedly from the casting of a woman’s breasts. They were separated by a champagne bucket filled with dildos.
“
Yaaah, yaaaaaah.” Nelson Riddle’s “Lolita” song, from Kubrick’s film, blared from a video-art piece nearby. “
Wo-ow, wo-ow, yaaah, yaaaaaah.”
Dago came over, still wearing his sunglasses and sucking on a small unlit cigar. He wanted to show Guadagnino “New Religion,” a room-size
Damien Hirst piece about faith and pharmaceuticals which he owned. (“Dago is a Catholic,” Guadagnino explained.) He apologized, in passing, for the prudishness of the décor. Down on the lower floor that he’d converted into offices for the Dagospia staff, he could give freer rein to his eclectic tastes: a wall of Sacred Heart paintings; a set of black-and-red leather chairs shaped like penises; and, on a coffee table, a set of delicate fine-china plates bearing closeup photographs of fellatio and of a trans person being penetrated from behind.
Dinner was served. The guests filed downstairs, to the dining room, passing a nude frontal photograph of a slender man with a pendulous member. “Baryshnikov’s cock. Excuse me—Nureyev’s cock!” Guadagnino said. “Dago is very proud of it.” The table was decorated with a brass hammer and sickle. Dago shut the dining-room door, which was printed with a life-size posterior photo of a naked blond woman in gold stilettos. An enormous Anselm Kiefer canvas hung opposite Guadagnino.
[...]
Talk moved on to opera, but then somebody began attacking Bernardo Bertolucci, and Guadagnino rose again in defense, looking flushed and sheepish. Bertolucci made major American studio work without abandoning his own aesthetic—extraordinary! he said. (In 2013, he and Fasano made “Bertolucci on Bertolucci,” a documentary in tribute.) As servants began clearing the table for dessert, Dago presented Guadagnino with a gift in honor of his recent successes: a souvenir bottle of liqueur shaped like a penis and testicles. Guadagnino stood to make a little speech of gratitude.