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TACONES LEJANOS. THE DIRECTOR SPEAKS
The idea of "Tacones Lejanos" comes from the screenplay I wrote for a short as I was readying "Atame" (Tie me Up, Tie me Down). Preparing a shooting causes so much despair that, to get away, I make up whimsical stories that end up leading to another movie. It's my way of being unfaithful to the story I have in my hands, but above all, it diverts me from the difficulties of a pre-production process.
The short just narrated the TV News part.
I'm not a good TV viewer. In fact, I hate it (every time someone has suggested me to work for TV, I've answered that I would only be interested in making a news program. And that's not a boutade).
I've dreamed many times with what Rebeca does on the news; a presenter that confesses herself guilty and gives all kinds of detail about the murder she has just announced.
However, I don't find this to be the scene's best (when, before the camera, the set manager, the technicians, her mother watching TV, she says she's killed her husband), but rather when she grabs her purse and, not taking her eyes from the camera as if it were a friend or a psychiatrist, she admits openly (and painfully) that once she's killed him she feels all alone, that killing him has not killed the love she felt for him. She draws an envelope full of photos and, showing them to the camera, she explains that the night after the murder she took photographs of some memories of her life together which she's certain they'll never share again (the bed, the closet, the furniture, etc).
That's the most dramatic and exciting moment. Such detailed concession provides the confession with magnificent splendor.
Wasn't it for this second part, the confession would be a simple gag, a rather more humorous than dramatic coup de theatre. It turns into something startling this way.

When I finished "Atame" I thought about shooting the short, but its central character made me so curious I needed to know her trajectory. The character was too big for such a short story, it was too tempting. So I started developing her story from both ends, leaving the confession right in the middle. And it wasn't easy, because I wanted Rebeca's character to be a monster or a psycho. I intended the viewers to get excited with her, to understand her and not to judge and sentence her. For simple length reasons, the brief narrative of a short allows you to display the facts with no need to get involved or explain them, but a feature film requires the author to provide a detailed description of the events and to find his place in the story. And I found mine from the beginning, very close to Rebeca. That was the main difficulty of writing, directing and playing the story; not to make an unpleasant murder of her, but an angry and wounded human being, the victim of her own pain. Victoria Abril's has been decisive. The humanness, complexity and transparence of her character are bloodcurdling.

The mother's character turned more accessible. She's not an exemplary mother, not unselfish either, but her heroic gesture by the end redeems her of all her imperfections and allows her to win the heart of the viewer-interlocutor.
The third character, Femme Letal and Judge Dominguez, is not a model for behavior. In time I find out that I'm closer to the imperfect and complex characters -as far as I'm capable of explaining what their imperfections are like, which is like showing them as human beings. My challenge as a writer and director is to bring light into that complexity, to let viewers read in their eyes and words the reasons inspiring their actions.

I've tried to tell in a lineal way a story that's anything but lineal, and neither is the screenplay. In the screenplay time is fragmented, and only halfway down the story do they follow parallel curses. Even though there are two murders, my intention was not to describe how they occur, neither was it to take advantage from the tension and intrigue so particular of a crime story. I wanted to tell the effect these deaths had on the characters and how they channeled their alternate guilty and innocence for their own benefit.

I have declined to use the characters, thus allowing them to judge, punish and pardon themselves. Justice, if there is such thing, is not exercised in court but deep within our consciousness, and it's expressed in a language of its own, the language of pain and passion.

Rebeca and her mother act with their backs against men's law, and God's (a catholic god as is understood in Spain). I trust the individual fragility and its imperfect nature better than the institutional soundness. That's one of my goals for telling this story, fearless of sounding amoral.
The search (nostalgia) for the father (or the mother) is a classic, it's eternal. It has produced plenty of melodrama, old and contemporary: right from "Stella Dallas", "Mildred Pierce", "Imitación a la vida" or "Paris-Texas" and up to "Mommie Dearest", "Terms of Endearment", "Postcards From The Edge" and "Buenas noches, madre" (to mention just a few). If I were to choose a reference that would be "Leave Her To Heaven", by John M. Stahl. A corrosive and never seen before melodrama that show romantic passion's evil side. Gene Tierney loved her husband so much she couldn't stand sharing him with anything in this world, not even with the baby she carried inside, so she doesn't hesitate to get rid of him. Even though I love classic melodrama, I've disregarded the usual manicheism and sentimental indulgence so particular of this genre. "Tacones Lejanos" is a hard melodrama, it is close to horror films and thrillers in turns (and why not, to musical comedies as well). It's also a literary film, a story that goes on developing itself through words. The characters speak out using words, or giving them up, and the word also becomes their best weapon for attack and defense. Words can help them kill or save someone's life. In my opinion, two good dialogue lines in the mouth of a well-developed character are as effective as the special effects in "Terminator 2." The use of the word is not common in today's films. With the exceptions of Woody Allen, Eric Rohmer, Spike Lee, Steve Soderbergh ("Sex, Lies...") Gonzalo Suarez, the early Trueba and some others, the word has been lost. Unlike theirs (except for Suarez the unclassifiable), my dialogues are naturalistic, I'm closer to Mankiewicz's style (if you will forgive the expression).

Ever since I was a kid I've kept a passionate relation with movies. Mine was an early call; I always wanted to make films. Back then I thought that movies were the actors, but then I discovered all the other elements that go with them, the people who created and wrote the story, for example. At that moment I decided that my call was to be the narrator, the owner of the game, the one who decided the story to tell and how to tell it. However, now that I'm a director, I still believe that the actors are the material on which the story is printed. They give life to the narrative, they lead it and turn it into something real. I became a filmmaker to direct actors, and "Tacones…" belongs to the kind of films that depend almost entirely on actors, they conform the axle for the other elements to spin around: light, production design, shooting, atmosphere, music, editing… Everything. And "Tacones…" owes it all to Marisa Paredes' and Victoria Abril's powerful virtuosity properly watched by Miguel Bose. Watching those two beasts face to face; that's what I call entertainment -not despising any of the other equally analyzed and developed aspects, of course. The magnitude of Victoria's and Marisa's talent impregnates every sequence they play.
And since, as I said before, this is a very oral film, I'm going to let the characters themselves tell us their story with their fierce straightforwardness.

REBECA
My mother was always weak with men, I tried to help and defend her from them. I would have liked to become a good man for her, a strong, funny and understanding man to protect and amuse her without turning suffocating. But I was just a girl and never roused in mom anything but discomfort and guilt.
Since everything she offered me was that, her feeling of guilt, I tried hard to make that feeling as strong as possible. But that happened much later. I guess you'll say that I'm paranoid. And you might be right.
Mom left after her second husband's death, leaving him with the former, I.e. my father. All the time she's been away her memory has been like a prison to me, one that I haven't been able to escape from. But the fact is that I never even tried. I've had the chance to learn what a prison is actually like, and I'm telling you: it's no worse than the one I had built within.
Since mom was not with me, the only way of gaining her presence back and preventing her memory from fading away was to impersonate her. I did my hair and dressed like her, no matter if her style suited me or not. I gave singing a try, I even recorded a single I produced myself, and then I asked for an acting job in a soap opera no one remembers.

I failed.

All I did with my impersonation was to increase the difference (distance) between us. I changed when I met Manuel, I knew he had been one of my mother's lovers and the last thing I wanted was to remind him about her. In fact, I didn't even tell him I was her daughter until long after our wedding. That was the day he started looking at me with different eyes.
But mom is back, it's taken her fifteen years but she's back at last. When I saw her at the airport, disoriented by the frenzy motion of luggage here and there, wrapped in a red gauze dress by Armani and a white shirt, that's when I experienced the corroboration of her solar magnitude. Unlike myself, her absence had increased her splendor, now it was defined and specified and there was a natural line that separated her from the rest of the world; but also from me, her little Rebeca.

It looked like time had worked for her, but it also seemed it had stopped regarding my relation with her. When she hugged me and spoke, her voice sounded exactly the same as before she left. To her I was still twelve, and so I felt. I'm just 150 cm tall, as if her absence had prevented me from growing. Something froze in and out of me when she left, something that eroded instead of maturing, like a cloth hung outdoors.
In the first days after our re-encounter I fought hard to overcome the rancor amassed for years. My passion for her was much stronger than that, but sometimes it blinded me and defeated my love for her -just as it happens in tennis, a player in 20th position of the world ranking suddenly defeats the much better number one player and no one understands it.
I had grown used to the remorse language and gestures, and even though my life's been marked by my passion for my mother, it is that remorse that has dominated all my expressions. And afraid of such feelings, my mother stepped back and didn't quite finish going through the short distance that would take her to the doors of my unlimited love. It should have been me running that distance to reach her, but I didn't know how. And what should have been just a love declaration turned into the opposite, a complex war declaration, a war in which she couldn't even counter-attack because I was its first victim.

I killed my husband. Not just because he had seen my mother again -she wasn't his only lover. I wanted to call her attention, but mom collapsed, she didn't react to such a horrible event and, hiding from confusion and pain, she found shelter in the only thing that never failed her: her job. Singing. As for myself, I opened my well of bitterness and dove under its black surface. To take revenge from her (and Manuel) I confessed myself guilty of her murder on the news, as I read about his funeral. I didn't care if I had to be the first victim of that vengeance. I didn't know of any other way of calling her attention, of making her realize she had a daughter down in the abyss. But of course, once that distance was established, it was impossible to take a shortcut; that would mean her diving into the abyss as well, and that was asking too much, even from a mother. Especially from a mother like mine, one who, on her life's peak moment, opted for her career and pleasure giving up her family. I understand women sometimes need to make that sort of decisions to feel free. But ours was a different case, when I was a child I made her promise me that we would never separate from one another, that together we would share her freedom and autonomy and not loose any of them. I supported her when she decided to leave a man, and I helped her many times without her knowing it. But she didn't keep her promise and although I've tried to forget it (I swear it), I can't forgive her.
People are sometimes born for a very specific end. I was born to love my mother and be with her. It's a shame, a tragedy that her destiny was different and didn't include me.

BECKY DEL PARAMO
I'm back in Madrid to die. Like an animal closing its cycle, I want to die in the house where I was born, in the same room and, if possible, in the same bed. I've bought an apartment on the ground floor in Plaza del Alamillo, nº 5. Many people find it weird that I live underground, but the reason is that I was born there. My parents were the caretakers of that building and obviously occupied the least appreciated area. However, I wouldn't even trade it for the palace of Louis II. I remember the windows on the ceiling level and the light coming through. I've finally become obsessed with the memories of that light and the pedestrians' feet.
I just knew I came to die (me and my family doctor), but no one predicted the hell I was to find in Madrid.
I'm a bad mother, a woman who's always considered herself a woman and not a mother; but it couldn't have been any other way. Should I've had stayed, I know I would have been much more miserable.

I'm not apologizing here; I've always been a hedonist. I was also weak, selfish and weak. My way of solving problems was to run away from them. But ever since the doctor in Mexico told me that not only my character was weak, that my heart was so as well, I decided to come back to Madrid and finish my days here. I also needed to solve the situation with Rebeca. I knew it wasn't an easy task. She's always been a very complex girl, vindictive and lonely, obsessive and possessive, like a husband. She was hardheaded and demanding, and her mother's abandonment definitely wasn't the best therapy for a girl her age and characteristics. I wasn't ready to learn that my daughter hated me, even though she had plenty of reasons for doing it. In any case, I didn't want to tell her about my "delicate" condition, that would have been blackmail. I wanted to actually conquer her again, and if my illness were to have anything to do with it, then it wouldn't be a real reconquest.

But I made lots of mistakes as usual. I didn't know how to measure the fierce influence of my actions. I was wrong when I thought that Rebeca had turned into a mature and independent being in these 15 years. But when I realized that, she had already began her terrible climb. But the death of my weary heart was triggered off by Rebeca's confession on TV and the encounter we had later, when the Judge summoned us to a room where we were left alone. Although that also was necessary, since just after taking my punishment was I capable of deciding that the little life I had left was to be dedicated to my daughter. That weary heart would only beat for her; the time had finally come for me to grow up as well. Fearless and for the first time I was going to face the situation and try to solve it my way. I had to show her my love, tell her she was not alone against justice and her own conscience.

Even though Judge Dominguez had released her for lack of evidence, her problems were not over yet. My daughter had suffered in life the punishment she deserved for her crimes, and I couldn't bear the idea of running away from her again; this time forever, behind bars and with my life ruined.

The idea that could save Rebeca came to me as I was being taken to the hospital after suffering a heart attack on stage. I just needed to tell her into keeping quiet, her silence would save us both. There's no stronger force than when mother and daughter ally. I can't tell you what my plan was now, it's a secret that stays with us and keeps us together. We're accomplices at last! If I was selfish in life, I want to be of some good to her in death.

As we drove home in the ambulance and Rebeca took my hand I understood we would have owned the world had we managed to bring down the barriers separating us. We talked and relaxed for the first time, she told me how she killed Manuel and I told her she needed to find another way of solving her problems with men. She told me "you show me" and I put the oxygen mask on to avoid a pessimistic answer ("I don't have time anymore").
What a great couple we would have been! The same bizarre sense of humor, the same disobedience, the same independence from all prejudice, be it social or moral. Like mother, like daughter; it's a shame I found out at the end of my project.

Once settled at home, in the same room where I was born, I hear Rebeca coming in. She's brought a suitcase with her stuff and has taken the room next to mine. Even if it has been for a few minutes only, we've lived together again.
She's come into my room to see how I feel and we haven't talked much; we didn't have time and I still had to finish off my plan, that precious heir I can't talk about. She pretends she's not distorted by the pain. However, I'm at ease, calm, death has waited for me to finish all my duties. I tell Rebeca to open the window so I can see the street. I knew my time had come to meet death, so I opened the window for her.

As Rebeca was securing the lace curtain on both sides of the window, the wheel of a bicycle entered our overall view. It was pulled by what looked like a young man's legs. Soon after, a woman's legs on high heels walked up to meet the bicycle. The shadow of those heels was projected on my bedrest and, melted with it, I breathed my last.
Rebeca stood with her back on me as she opened the window. She went in raptures when she saw those heels and said: "As a child, when we lived together, I couldn't sleep until I heard your heels, in the background, walking down the hallway and into my room."
Then she turned and, as in a prayer, she went on: "I didn't care what time it was, I always waited for you awake."
I couldn't hear this last part, but Rebeca needed to tell me. Then she hugged my body and began moaning.