DROWSINESS
by Pedro Almodóvar

I’m drowsy when I arrive at the shooting. We are in the eleventh week and the shower and coffee aren’t enough to wake me up.

My body reaches the studio while my mind is walking around my house or is still on the way.

I tell the first assistant director (the real arbitrator in this whole set-up) the shot with which we are to begin the day’s work. He informs the cameraman while the director of photography (owner of light but also of time) gets ready to direct a frenzied choreography in which the electricians become the dancers. Of all the crews that make up The Crew, the department of photography is the one whose members are most attractive, they work faster and harder than anyone else and gobble up the greatest amount of sandwiches. They have the kind of sturdy and “normal” build that is typical of football players.

While the electricians move cables, multiple socket adaptors, stuccos, lights, screens, etc. I withdraw to my dressing room with the hope that silence will place its balsamic hand over my head and illuminate me.

I wait, drowsy, for the cameraman to try out the movements with the camera and for the director of photography to create the atmosphere. Then, it’s my turn. I come in and tell actors how they should move about the set and why; normally, I cling like a leech and move about with them. Afterwards we read the text and I infuse them with my intentions, which often can only be read between the lines, I suggest the tone and they follow my pointers with attention.

Each crew manager has a particular detail to correct at the last minute. Once again, I explain to the actors the music for each word, the length of the pauses, the pitch of each phrase. I direct them as if they were sleepwalking singers in an opera whose sole music is that of words.

Just as one is unconscious at the precise moment when one falls asleep, I am not conscious about the moment when I wake up, but it always seems to be when the actors appear (actresses in this film) and I am working with them. Totally awake I stand by the camera or in front of the video screen connected to it, where the images are reproduced. From that point onwards, my body turns into a 100 Kg block of adrenaline. I’m all eyes and ears, watching over the actors as they go about their delicate, neurotic and moving game.

In the eleventh week of shooting, the only thing that manages to wake me is my work with the actors, utterly unique and non-transferable.

ACTORS’ EYES

Don’t ask me why but “Volver” is a story told through the eyes of the actors. From the beginning I felt I needed to see them and this impulse, somewhat abstract but very powerful, forced me to have the type of planning in which camera location and movements are hardly noticeable.

I realised when I saw the edited material on Saturday with Alberto Iglesias, my musician. Proximity to the actors forces you to use a, let’s say, classical planning. To make myself clearer, it’s the opposite to Dogma, (and that doesn’t mean I don’t like their films. In fact, I like them all but I hate those of their followers).

MONOLOGUE NIGHT

In the script of “Volver” there is a long sequence that is practically a monologue since only one character talks, the one played by Carmen Maura. In that sequence, Carmen is telling her dearest daughter (Penélope) the reasons for her death and for her return to life. She does so along six intense pages and six shots which are just as intense. This sequence is one of the reasons why I wanted to shoot “Volver”, I’ve cried every single time I’ve corrected that text. (I feel like the character played by Kathleen Turner in “Romancing the Stone”, a ridiculous writer of very kitsch romantic novels who cried non stop while she wrote them).

The crew was well aware of the importance of this scene since we began shooting and such intense interest made Carmen a little nervous. She wanted to tackle it as soon as possible in order to get the weight off her mind. We spent a whole night shooting it and everyone, from the trainee to myself, was completely focused, with the concentration required by the truly difficult scenes and which, precisely for that reason, become the easiest ones since we are all at our full potential.

Once again I sense that sacred complicity with Carmen, a marvellous feeling of being before an instrument that is perfectly tuned for me. All the takes are good, some even extraordinary. Penélope listens to her. In this film there is a lot of talking, a lot of hiding, a lot of listening and, given that it is supposed to be comedy, and so the crew says, a lot of crying.

And it is during this complicated night that we receive the visit of Cecilia Roth and Felicity Lott. Both are performing at the Zarzuela Theatre, Cecilia in Cocteau’s “The human Voice” and Felicity in Poulenc’s opera based on the same text. Too many emotions for a night that could only hold one: Carmen’s amazing monologue.

I talk with Cecilia about the importance of “The voice” in my work. Carmen played it in “The Law of Desire”, ¡and how! It’s wonderful to realise that from “The Law” (in my opinion, the peak of her acting career) until now, Maura hasn’t changed. She hasn’t learned anything new because she already knew it all, but keeping that fire intact for two decades is an admirable and difficult task which not all the actors I’ve worked with have managed to accomplish.

Cecilia’s presence, the accumulation of monologues, the night and my own interior voice lead me to think about the last twenty years, about the time that has passed between “The Law” and “Volver”. In how much we’ve changed, or more to the point, how much I’ve changed because I think that, inside, Carmen has hardly changed. She is still the sweet chatterbox who refuses to complicate herself and lives her life with a relaxed and smooth humour. In comparison to her, I feel I have become heavier, and not just physically. Before my load was lighter. Setbacks and problems lit up a wild spark inside of me that not only managed to defuse them but, sometimes, actually turned them into an inspiration.

I remember, for instance, the day that we were going to shoot the scene of “The Human Voice” in “The Law”. They had lent us the Lara Theatre for just one day. When I arrived at eight in the morning and saw the décor on stage, I was furious. I didn’t like it at all and we only had that day for shooting.

Even though it was early, I asked for an axe. Nobody seemed surprised, they brought me one. And as soon as I had it in my hands I began to hack away at the décor. We called Carmen and I handed her the axe. “When the scene starts”, I told her, “you are completely deranged and while you wait for the call, you destroy the house that you shared with your lover”. Carmen looked at me with the smile of a naughty girl, game for anything.

Really? She asked.

I gave her the axe and she energetically attacked her bedroom. I much preferred this to what I had originally planned when I prepared the scene.

God bless that ugly décor!

Nowadays, when I don’t like a décor I get an anxiety attack. Before I solved the situation with wild humour and recklessness and now I make do with breathing exercises and a tranquilizer or two. But I’m not complaining.

©Pedro Almodóvar
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