Thom Yorke has composed the soundtrack for Italian director Daniele Luchetti’s relationship drama “Trust,” which will soon launch in competition from the Rotterdam Film Festival.
Yorke’s work with Luchetti on “Trust” marks the second feature fully scored by the Radiohead and the Smile frontman since working on Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 “Suspiria” remake. The following year, in 2019, Yorke contributed to Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn.”
“Trust,” which is based on the novel “Confidenza” by Neapolitan writer Domenico Starnone, centers on a teacher in his 40s named Pietro Vella – played by A-list Italian actor Elio Germano – who works in a rundown Roman high school. He becomes romantically entangled with a former student years after they intersect in class. Their affair triggers some deep-seated fears in Pietro.
“It’s the story of a man who, for his entire life, finds himself trapped between a fear of love and a love of fear,” Luchetti told Variety. The prominent auteur, who most recently helmed the third season of RAI/HBO’s Elena Ferrante series “My Brilliant Friend,” added that “Trust” is “about how an entire life can be paralyzed by this [fear].”
Luchetti said he and Yorke first collaborated on a documentary about Italy’s grand dame of ballet Carla Fracci titled “Codice Carla,” for which Yorke gave him some preexisting tracks he had done with the now-dissolved band Atoms for Peace.
“We had done this weird pairing of classical music with these tracks. At the end of this work I asked Thom if he wanted to write the score for a film,” Luchetti recalled.
Yorke replied that he didn’t have much time. But a few months after Luchetti sent him the screenplay for “Trust,” he got a call from Yorke saying it had “evoked some musical threads.”
“He said, ‘For the moment I’ll send you a piece. If you like it, we can keep working together,’” Luchetti said, noting that “it was a beautiful surprise and a lovely gift.”
From then on, Luchetti and Yorke worked intensely, using the “Trust” dailies as their basis with Luchetti telling Yorke what notes he had given the actors that day “in terms of subtext,” he said.
“We always found a way in sideways; building the music more through the subtext than through the narrative itself,” he added. Luchetti underlined that “we were constantly searching for something that sounded a bit off.”
As for the type of score Yorke composed for “Trust,” it comprises music for classical orchestral strings and for a jazz orchestra, as well as a substantial electronic music component.
“Trust” is co-produced by Italy’s Indiana Production and Vision Distribution which, besides selling the film internationally, will also be releasing it theatrically in Italy.
