‘Saint Clare’s Rebecca De Mornay & Mitzi Peirone Talk Inspiration & Influence Of Joan Of Arc — Taormina

Nancy Tartaglione
·3 min read

Italian directer and writer Mitzi Peirone’s Taormina Film Festival opener Saint Clare employs a number of cues from the story of Joan of Arc, the 15th century warrior and martyr who believed that God had chosen her to lead France to victory in its long-running war with England.

Saint Clare is set in a small town where a solitary, young woman (Bella Thorne) is haunted by voices that lead her to assassinate ill-intended people and get away with it, until her last kill sucks her down a rabbit hole riddled with corruption, the trafficking of young women and visions from the beyond. It’s based on Don Roff’s novel, Clare at Sixteen.

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Peirone, who took a crack at co-writer Guinevere Turner’s (American Psycho) version, explained, “The Italian in me had to bring European, Joan of Arc, had to bring history, had to bring Renaissance paintings and chiaroscuro,” to the film.

Rebecca De Mornay who plays Clare’s grandmother and a former Hollywood actress, told Deadline, “Joan of Arc has always been a real influence on my life… that she existed, that at 18 she was leading an army and that she talked to God and was misunderstood.”

De Mornay added she has “always identified with her spirit. So, to have a film actually drawing on themes of Joan of Arc, feminism and themes of empowerment and also have it be a thriller, like Death Wish with Charles Bronson, but it’s a female that is not gonna take it — I just loved it.”

Peirone chose to age up the titular character and “graduate” her to a university student rather than a Catholic school-age girl.

Part of the inspiration came from Peirone’s own time in Catholic school. “I have to say that studying the bible and Catholicism in general is very graphic, objectively. There’s a reason why most spiritual horrors… are inspired by Christianity, because it’s violent, it’s beautiful, it’s gruesome, it’s baroque.”

There is an “element of theatricality in Clare that I brought to the source material — this ambition to be kind of a saint, not literally, but everybody can have ambitions of becoming greater than their circumstances, and Clare has a blind devotion towards her mission.”

Saint Clare is “exactly” the sort of film De Mornay is looking for today, said the veteran star of such films as Risky Business and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Characters “that expose a different strength for women, and that has always been my desire throughout my career – to showcase the strength of women regardless if they’re a psychopath nanny or if they’re a train mechanic, even if they’re a prostitute, that they are living life at their terms making the best of their opportunities on their terms and not defined by what a man says.”

De Mornay told Deadline, “A woman doesn’t have to be a homemaker or a sexy femme fatale or a victim, which is kind of the motto of my personal life, not representing women as a victim.”

Asked if De Mornay still gets excited being on a movie set, she responded, “On this film yes.” However, she added, “Risky Business had its 40-year anniversary last year and in the interim of those 40 years, there’s been many times when I’ve been on set and thought, ‘I don’t really want to be an actress anymore.’”

Still, on Saint Clare, “Even though my part is relatively small, I was excited because the story is really important to me… a female character who is facing so much opposition and overcoming it in such an unconditional way.”

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