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BUÑUEL, FEET AND LEGS.
Buñuel loved feet, especially women's. Feet and all that
come with them: stockings, shoes, shoe stores, shoe store salesgirls,
etc. He also liked legs pretty much, and stockings. To Buñuel,
a woman began at her feet.
The first sequence in "Él" (Him), one of
my favorite films from his Mexican period (together with "Leave
Her to Heaven" they are the twin towers, genuine film summits
on psycho jealousy), takes place in a church: a priest is washing
the feet of every parishioner during an Easter ceremony.
Focusing on the protagonist's point of view, one by one the camera
shows the feet of some penitents until it comes against a pair of
beautiful black heels supporting each leg. The owner of these limbs
is to become the owner of his heart and prisoner of the cruelest
and most paranoid jealousy.
There is a scene in "Carne Tremula" where Elena
grabs Victor's legs desperately. This is not a homage to Buñuel,
neither is Elena's character a fetishist. She's married to a paraplegic;
her marital life lacks feet and legs. It's for this reason that
she presses her cheeks against Victor's feet and sprays them with
her morning broken cry.
THE LOVERS'
bodies lie upside down on the bed. They have spent the night riding
one another, the one within the other. Victor is left dizzy. In
dreams, he feels Elena embracing his legs and he recalls the only
day he went to her house, when she lived with her father. The TV
was showing an old movie with this guy dragging a feminine mannequin
on the ground. When it hits a stair, the mannequin looses a limb.
That surrealist image was registered in Victor's memory, and he
recalls it now that he feels Elena's arms around his legs. The film
wasn't other than "Ensayo de un crimen", by Luis
Buñuel.
WINTER SHOOTING.
Spain has just survived the hottest winter in history (winter of
97). For the exterior sequences in "Carne Tremula" I counted
on those skies run by clouds as dark as smoke so characteristic
of Madrid; but mother nature was not on my side and, instead of
grey skies, we've suffered a persistent blinding sun from January
to March. I've had no other alternative than taking it as fate's
imposition (just like the five characters share a black and incandescent
destiny very well captured by Juan Gatti in the poster's
typography).
Apart from a metaphor justifying Alfonso Beato's splendid
work as director of photography and Gatti´s as chief graphic
artist, this extreme heat, madrileño, wintry and infernal,
has caused new and strange phenomena in nature; broken and anticipated
ecological cycles the experts can't believe yet. Flies have been
bothering all year around (it's the first winter I remember having
suffered them), crickets started trilling in March (when that usually
happens in late April), the cuckoo brought forward several weeks
its singing debut and the cherry trees covered Jerte Valley
with white flowers 45 days before the official festivity. Just as
if a bride decided to wear her wedding dress to church two months
before the ceremony and not telling the guests, what absurdity!
The same rush has brought the cabbage butterfly and the stork disoriented
by the sun.
Victor Plaza (Liberto Rabal) leaves the prison in
a morning of this hot winter. And just like the sun's unexpected
presence affected flies, crickets, cuckoos, sherry trees, storks
and butterflies, Victor's is to trigger off a real catharsis in
Elena, David, Sancho and Clara, just
for the fact of being alive, healthy, free (and hot) like the sun.
ELENA (Francesca Neri)
is the only child of a widower Italian diplomat; she's one of those
"poor rich kids" of nomad and indulgent childhood. In
the late 80's, Elena was flirting with abyss, chaos and hard drugs.
One of those never-ending madrileño nights, in the women's
room of an after-hours club, she had an erotic encounter with an
adolescent Victor. When he visits her a week later, she doesn't
even remember him and interrupts him quickly; she's waiting for
her dealer. Victor is left standing at Elena's door, frustrated,
humiliated, alone and pissed. He's a lonely teen, liable and proud.
The son of a hooker, he shares a prefab cabin with her in a district
doomed to disappear.
DAVID AND SANCHO (Javier Bardem and Pepe Sancho, respectively)
are two cops patrolling downtown wearing civilian clothes. The first
is a youngster yet to be (had he had the chance he would have become
a good cop), the other doubles him in age and despair. Sancho is
a typical film-noir character. He drinks like crazy and loathes
and suspects everyone. As he confesses David, his wife, Clara, is
seeing someone "It could be any bypasser" he says and
thinks as he looks out the car window. Obstinate, intoxicated, slave
and blinded by passion, he's like those old fat men capable of killing
as their only way to salvation (the Broderick Crawfords in
"Human Desire"). His mate knows that and tries
to humor him as they walk their tension through the cheerful and
peaceful streets of a noctivagant Madrid.
CLARA (Angela Molina)
is a beautiful woman about forty surrounded by plants, flowers and
fears. She used to be a flamenco dancer, thus her ancestral look
of a tragic and eternal woman. Unpredictable and passionate. Maternal
and fatal. She must have loved Sancho intensively, but that was
a long time ago. When he calls her from the patrol car (that fateful
night in 1990) she answers monosyllabic. She has a black eye; Sancho
hit her before leaving, and there's nothing worse for a lover than
the memory of hitting the woman he loves. Already in 1990, her relation
with her husband was going through a serious deteriorating process
that goes on when Victor leaves the prison six years later. Clara's
fragility makes her immune to pain, she's turned into a being with
no will, a shadow of herself that regains her body when she meets
Victor in the cemetery two days after his release.
BEGINNING FROM SCRATCH.
Victor was always an untimely boy. In a cold night in 1970 he dragged
his mother from her bed in the boardinghouse where she lived and
worked. She didn't have time to make it to the hospital and Victor
was born halfway through, on a bus. The city was desert and a chill
breeze was not capable of sweeping the fear from the streets. And
no wonder why, Franco's government had declared State
of Emergency in all the national territory. All forms of freedom
were forbidden and every Spanish was liable for being arrested indefinitely
and with no arguments (stay of Art. 18 on Privilege of the Spanish
People). It's so good that many of the viewers don't even know
what the State of Emergency is.
The first sequences of "Carne Tremula" tell Victor's birth,
on the bus in the middle of Madrid's desert heart.
I found the inspiration for this vibrant beginning not in "Speed",
but in my own mother. As part of a documentary the BBC 2
was making about myself, years ago a crew arrived at my mother's
hometown to interview her. I acted as makeshift translator. When
the reporter suggested that she tell an anecdote from my childhood,
my mother began with a detailed narration how I was born, what my
first expressions were, my sounds, my reactions. I was so embarrassed,
and then I understood that only mothers and some geniuses have the
ability of approaching the essential immediately, with neither effort
nor shame.
In fact, there's no better way for beginning a movie than telling
about the birth of its protagonist, it's what we know as "beginning
from scratch."
THE VERB.
Two days after leaving the prison, Victor visits his mother's grave
(she died while he was in). He stares at the humble tombstone that
reads name and time boundaries only, and addresses it as if he were
actually talking to his mother -this one of the constants in my
characters: they are oral. No matter whether the interlocutor is
a piece of marble (Victor and the tombstone), a so-called corpse
(Kika and the body she puts makeup on), a woman who can't answer
because she's gagged ("Tie me Up, Tie me Down")
or asleep (Paul Bazzo talking to Kika before raping
her) and, of course, the usual dialogue with the flowers, or with
a mute answering machine (Pepa in "Women...")
or the prayer before the altar of an absent God (the Mother
Superior in "Sisters of Night or Dark Habits").
They're all victims of the same solitude and incomprehension. That's
why they keep explaining themselves, for others to know them and
love them a little. By thinking aloud, at least they feel the company
of their own voice -I guess this is the sentence's principle, be
it grammatical or religious. Ever since the writing of the screenplay,
Victor stood out as a lonely and misunderstood guy, but talkative
at the same time. He was to talk to anyone, stones included, but
that doesn't mean he's in time with the world around him. The chemistry
of understanding happens, although instantly, only with Clara, because
she's a woman as much adrift as him and equally basic and naive.
MONOLOGUE BETWEEN VICTOR AND HIS DEAD MOTHER'S TOMBSTONE
"Hi, mother. I've been out for two days now. I couldn't make
it sooner because I've been cleaning and tidying the house…
I went to the bank this morning to cash your heir. 150,000 pesetas.
On my way here I've calculated the number of fucks you must have
gone for to save 150,000 pesetas. More than a thousand, I bet. And
I've received the same money with not a single go. That's not fair,
I don't think it is..."
IN THE CEMETERY
After this moved monologue (in which Liberto Rabal inherits
directly the throne Antonio Banderas left empty after "Tie
me Up…"), Victor turns around and finds a whole delegation
dressed in wonderful dark suits and cutting-edge black sunglasses.
It's Elena's father's funeral. She looks like never before, her
hair dark and pinned gives her a sober and intolerant air. But women
gain in contact with death, and Victor finds her more seductive
than ever. Next to her goes David on a wheelchair pushed by Sancho.
After leaving the prison and surrounded by death (and chance), Victor
comes against the characters that sentenced him. Elena has not only
changed her hairdo and style, she's stepped out of life's wildest
side and settled on the other.
CHANCE.
Even the homage to Buñuel, the inclusion of "Ensayo
de un crimen", happened by chance.
As background for the part where Victor and Elena argue in the living
room (and she aims at him with a gun that falls to the floor and
fires), I wanted the sound of the shot to match with another one
coming from the TV. Thus, I needed to choose a film with a shot
on it.
There are millions of films with shots on them, and I provided the
production department with a random list of the first ones that
came to my head. The first one was "Hard Boiled",
by John Woo. Plenty of deliciously choreographed shootings
illustrating a lovely and super-naive story, so suitable for Victor
to be watching it later, as he watches Elena's faint. I had already
chosen for that scene the moment in which a hero-cop, after rescuing
an infant hospital's entire floor, runs from the fire with a baby
on his hip. The flames burn his pants and the baby puts the incipient
fire off with a timely piss. But they should be films produced before
1990, since that's the year the story takes place, so John Woo's
was invalidated.
My second option was "Tiger Bay", by John Lee
Thomson. As a child I was a Hayley Mills fan -I wasn't
much into children movies, except for the lovely Hayley Mills- and
I enjoyed "Tiger Bay" very much. Seen with contemporary
eyes, the passionate murderer (Horst Buchold) and girl-witness-hostage
relation turns incredibly morbid, and that's the reason why the
film's still young. It's the buried but obvious sex pulse between
the girl in love with the murderer that gives the story a moral
touch that was as daring as ambiguous for the time.
Peckinpah's "The Getaway" was third in the list.
The two lovers exchanging shots and slaps allowed me for a parallel
editing with Victor and Elena's fight. And I love Peckinpah and
Jim Thompson; their characters are as ripped as ripping... (the
Sancho-Clara relation has a certain thompsonian air, I hope). Thompson
is to literature what Goya to painting.
I also considered "Gun crazy" (Joseph H. Lewis),
a thriller overflowing with fatality and where the shootings are
part of a circus show. It tells the story of two target specialists
who, apart from loving one another, are doomed to break the law
-considering their abilities.
Last in the film was "Ensayo de un crimen", the
last rights checked. But due to financial, red tape, feasibility
or time reasons, it happened to be the one. I was lucky. "Ensayo..."
and "Carne..." not only have a shot in common, they both
deal with Death, Chance, Fate and Guilt (all
this I found later).
DEATH.
To Buñuel, death is part of chance. Archibaldo de la Cruz,
the protagonist in "Ensayo..." accuses himself before
the police of killing people who died because he wanted them to.
Reality shows that they were just time coincidences, all the deaths
were natural. With a typical Spanish attitude, Buñuel laughs
at what he fears most, death and blame complex, two sound pillars
supporting our worst catholic education.
My generation and Buñuel's were educated on the principles
of fear of death and punishment. We are born guilty of one of the
most original sins one can imagine, the appropriately so-called
original sin. I don't think there is in the universal history of
perversion an invention as horrible as this (the original sin, I
mean) to initiate a boy in the knowledge of God and himself. In
"Carne Tremula" death lurks unwanted but not one character
is able to avoid it, despite its predictability… It's just
pure fatality. As Spanish as the bizarre joke on death, that tragic
sense of life impregnates the whole movie.
GUILT AND ITS COMPLEX.
Elena feels guilty for everything that happened in her house lobby
the night Victor called and she didn't remember him (she had seen
him just once in the club's restrooms; and she was so high). The
night Sancho was patrolling the streets of Madrid drinking
to forget his wife's infidelity. The same bloody night David didn't
dare confess Sancho, his mate, that it was him, David and no other,
who was fucking his wife, Clara. The night the dealer was late and
Elena was getting more and more anxious, when Victor rang the interphone,
she opened the door thinking it was the dealer, and then she started
calling the boy names and humiliating him, and since he wouldn't
go, she aimed at him with her father's gun. The night chance and
a neighbor's call made two cops enter the lobby with weapons loaded
with great doses of fatality...
Elena expiates her guilt through compulsive charity. Apart from
marrying a paraplegic cop, she's opened a Charity Infant House
together with her friends where she's spends all her efforts (and
money). Like ivy that ends up swallowing an entire façade
like a predator, Elena's guilt complex is so deeply rooted within
that she conceives life just as an eternal self-punishment. Her
compulsion towards drugs has changed for an equally compulsive generosity.
She lives exhausted by her complex (Francesca Neri's paleness
is ideal for the role).
This is the first time one of my films shows a woman with a skin
so white, but it's not the first time I use the feeling of Guilt
as the engine for one of my characters. Antonio Banderas'
in "Matador" had a mother who was a member of the
Opus Dei cult, Antonio was the victim of a guilt complex
so paranoid that he winds up accusing himself of everything that
occurs, and, to top it all, he's the student of a serial killer…
whose crimes he claims his as well, so he's taken to prison…
(the bad influence of such an oppressive mother allowed me to denounce
the horrible religious education I suffered at school).
In a very different way, Victoria Abril's character in "Tacones
Lejanos" (High Heels) makes use of her guilty consciousness
to attack people -her mother, in fact- to call her attention and
take revenge on her. Right on the TV news she presents, she confesses
being guilty of murder, certain that it will definitely shock her
mother; guilt as a projectile and means for vengeance. Almost the
opposite of what happened in "Matador".
In "Live Flesh" the guilt complex devours the character,
prevents her from living happily and turns as noxious as its opposite
(i.e. the unconsciousness of the events themselves, or the contempt
for people). Elena is probably the saddest female character I've
written. In fact, that's also new of this movie regarding my previous
filmmaking. The moral autonomy, the rage, the decision-making capacity,
etc. that had embellished my female characters so far are now features
of my masculine roles. To overcome a problem, one should not place
himself on the opposite end, especially not in a fanatic way. One
of the cruelest scenes of the film is when Elena confesses David
having fucked all night in his absence. Ever since her redemption,
she has promised not to lie again. She lied enough when she was
a junkie. But the truth can ruin as much as a lie.
The morning after, when David asks what she's going to do, she answers:
"I'll stay with you… 'cos you need me more than he does..."
Far from relieving, Elena's sincerity and generosity sound insulting
and definitely humiliating. And they cause David to react in an
evil way: "O.K." he says, "I'll go on taking advantage
of your guilt complex."
THE GENRE.
Just like most of my films, it's not easy to file "Live Flesh"
under any genre. All I know is that it is the most disturbing film
I've ever made, and the one that has disturbed me the most.
It's not a suspense film, not a thriller either -even if there are
cops and shootings with innocent criminals. It's neither a sequel
to "Lethal Weapon", even though there are two cops and
one's older than the other, nor a twilight western -I'd like to
make one some day. This is not an erotic movie, despite there being
several explicit, natural and educational fucks and the story taking
place in the boundaries of the leanest carnal desire. Judging by
the first reactions, looks like I've come up with a very sexy film
-the actors definitely have an irresistible presence and there's
no doubt about their physical appeal.
"Carne Tremula" is an intense, baroque and sensual drama
(completely independent of Ruth Rendell's inspiring novel)
that shares elements with the classic thriller and tragedy.
AFTERWORD.
The movie starts and ends with a birth in the middle of the street
in Christmas. The first one is Victor's, while Fraga Iribarne's
voice reels on the radio (with a clumsy pronunciation so unexpected
from a cultivated person) the horror the State of Emergency
means for the Spanish people. The second birth is Victor's
son's. Him and the mother-to be are stuck in a traffic jam. Even
though both births share the anxiety and immediateness of the delivery,
the circumstances take no comparison. Twenty-six years earlier the
streets were desert; now the crush is so huge that cars can even
move, the sidewalks are crowded with happy, drunk, consuming people.
People in Spain have lost their fear long ago, and for this
reason only, Victor's son is born in a much better country than
his father did.
I hadn't thought about it, but thinking about a genre so difficult
to assign to "Carne Tremula" it occurs to me that it might
just be a Christmas tale. I hate Christmas, but I like Christmas
tales -especially if they are sad. Pedro Almodovar.
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