“What a shadow in the instrument, and what a murmur, of the forests from whence issued its wood.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

While reading the “Midnight Skin” script for the first time, Carla in Nantes met Fanny in Athens. And the Eucalyptus trees.
And it was at this same moment, looking up, that she saw through her window, an Eucalyptus tree. Fact and fiction are already mixing, and Carla welcomes this sign with a smile.
Then comes the meeting with Manolis Mavris, and his work: first “Brutalia”, then “Midnight Skin”. The writing is chiseled and precise. Each frame is a painting. already a score.
One is struck by the strength and beauty of this film, the evocative power, the singularity, the ability to make the immediacy of a thought or a sensation last.
That is why Carla Pallone considers this original soundtrack with great joy and curiosity, aware of the richness and range of possibilities.
At the center of the film: Fanny's solitude which excludes her from humankind. This solitude requires a place for expression and Carla provides this one using her instruments and sounds collected on the set, between music and sound design.
She thus imagines an “organic” music, linked to the way that wood, strings and other materials live and resonate. A poetic and strange sound universe, close to Fanny, to her physical and psychological states.
The challenge is to give voice to the "body", like Johnny Greenwood in "The Power Of The Dog" where the musician is sensed as much as the instrument, and therefore divert a traditional use of the strings revealing the friction of the bow to evoke air, using the “col legno” for the cracking of the wood, wind versus breathing, human versus plant which end up getting confused.
But even if the violin is her favorite means of expression, Carla also give some place to the bass because one cannot ignore the mystery, the disquiet that operates throughout “Midnight Skin”. And it is with the help of polyphonic synthesizers that she enriches the materials, nourishes an ambiguity as to the source of the sound, and connects the different worlds of the film.
Carla Pallone finds the perfect junction between acoustic and electronic, highlighting a modern violin, out of the times.
The result is a soundtrack similar to Fanny, inhabited, dark and moving. Human.

Composer, violinist turned multi-instrumentalist, Carla Pallone has just composed the soundtrack for the medium-length movie Midnight Skin by greek director Manolis Mavris, recently screened at La Semaine De La Critique, Cannes, FR. She is also currently working with Matthieu Cruciani and the CDN of Colmar on a adaptation of Racine’s Phaedra.
In spring 2023, she wrote the music for the podcast series “The retrievals”, number one in the global Apple podcast charts for more than 5 consecutive weeks. (serial production & The New York Times)
Somewhere between Mickaël Nyman (The Piano Lesson) and Mica Levi (Under The Skin), Carla knows how to write atmospheres, create landscapes and draw lines of fiction. Her classical training and her taste for ancient music have nourished her path as a composer, to open the spectrum of her music to the widest possible audience.
With a strong appreciation for the strings, she explores a sensitive sound universe, which unfolds between organic and analog materials. Acute sense of melody, neoclassicism, minimalism... repetitive pieces of music rub shoulders with ritornellos with great joy. And if the violin is king, synthesizers also find their proper place as disturbing basses or melodic sweeps.
For the soundtrack of “The Girl With The Bracelet“ directed by Stéphane Demoustiers, she made her violin blow, making it breathy, textured, almost hoarse. For the musical work around Koltès monologue in “The Night Just Before The Forests“ directed by Matthieu Cruciani, she created a large and dark space, crossed by ghost sounds inherent to the text.
Then in “Libre Garance!“, a full-length movie by Lisa Diaz screened in Cannes in 2022, her music was fascinating, underlining the image without ever cluttering it.
There is great sensivity in his sound research, at the crossroads of musical paths, from the most classical to the most experimental, improvised or meditative as with her trio VACARME with Christelle Lassort and Gaspard Claus.
What was invented over twenty years in the duo Mansfield.TYA with Julia Lanoë, the success of the band also shows how her violin fit in with pop song format.