ALICIA

I know very little about Alicia. Only what is seen in the film. At times, the writer knows the characters' past and their future, far beyond the ending of the film. In this case, I have the same information as the spectator. Alicia's real film begins at the end, in the theater, when she meets Marco who has been so moved by the sighs in Masurca Fogo.

Perhaps, at some other time, I'll tell the story of the two of them, Marco and Alicia, but first I'd have to write it.

Alicia's mother died when she was a child. Her father is a psychiatrist and she is a dancer. Her skin is white and her expression severe, as if her premature development has made her mistrustful of the glances she attracts. She always occupies the same place in the bar exercises, next to a window, in the Decadance Academy. Her dancing mistress, Katerina Biloba, an ex-ballerina and lonely like Alicia, adores her. Alicia makes the academy her home and Katerina her most solid emotional reference.

When Benigno sees her dance for the first time (from the window opposite) he doesn't hear the music. Alicia seems to be absorbed in an interior melody. That absorption will continue for years, on the bed in the "El Bosque" Clinic, a two-story building which looks like a detached house and in which Benigno is the model nurse.

Alicia's room is decorated with personal objects, things she had in her bedroom at home until, one rainy day, she was knocked down by a car. It was the first thing Benigno told her father: "Bring me something of hers, something personal...". "What kind of thing?", the confused father asked him. "Things that she has in her room... so that when she wakes up she won't feel she's in a strange place."

In her house, before the accident, Alicia had lava lamps on both her bedside tables. She was reading The Night of the Hunter (the masterpiece by Davis Grubb) and page 115 was turned down at one corner, as a marker. She also had an alarm clock and a photo of her parents when they were young. And two tiny, brightly colored boats, a souvenir which Katerina brought her from a trip she'd made to Salvador de Bahía to see the Bahian women dance. And a photo of Katerina. All these objects returned to her, on both sides of the bed again, in her room in the clinic. The alarm clock was still working but the marker in the novel hadn't moved from page 115.

The lava lamps (like the corridors and the treetops moved by the wind) are a metaphor for the curdled passing of time. Their thick bubbles, wandering ceaselessly in the depths of an oily liquid, suggest the mysterious limbo in which the beautiful, recumbent Alicia dwells.

LEONOR WATLING

She's wonderful playing the sleeping beauty in the "El Bosque" Clinic. Her motionless body is so expressive and so moving! Anyone who thinks that simulating a coma is easy is mistaken. It isn't enough just to lie on a bed and close your eyes. Skin reacts to the slightest contact, and the nurses never stop working with her all day (massages, changing her position several times a day, checking her vital signs, giving her rubdowns with rosemary alcohol, putting drops in her eyes so they don't get dry, applying moisturizing creams, changing the bedclothes daily with the patient in the bed, washing her body every day, etc.)

In order to achieve the self control which allows one to disconnect from the exterior world, Leonor and Rosario took yoga classes (Yyengar, to be specific) for three months before the shoot. I wanted them to be sunk within the very depth of their beings, an unfathomable depth, and for that they had to be very relaxed.

Although she has scenes where she is speaking and is upright or with her eyes open, Leonor's presence is more obvious and more powerful the greater her absence. Let me put it like this. Leonor isn't playing dead, something I don't think would be easy either. (Buñuel first chose Fernando Rey because he liked how he played a corpse in some film or other). Without words, without eyes, without the help of the slightest movement, Leonor Watling's body withstands the presence of two superb actors (Cámara and Grandinetti) without the spectator ever losing sight of her. She shares the scene with both of them and at times steals it and transports it to some mysterious place which even I don't know.

Watling is Alicia living in the darkest part of the other side of the looking glass. When, at the end, she looks at Marco in the theater, her eyes show in silence the long, dark road she has had to travel in order to be able to open them.

Leonor Watling fills the screen to overflowing with dreams and desires. The word is made flesh in her and I shall always be grateful to her for her generosity.

(Regarding the preparation, there was one point when Rosario, Leonor and Javier Cámara were spending the whole day doing classes of one kind or another. As well as the daily practice of yoga (the Yyengar type) Rosario had training and bullfighting classes every day with the maestro Macareno and Leonor was slogging away at dance classes with the ballet mistress Irena. In turn, Javier (along with the marvelous Mariola Fuentes) was being trained in the countless details involved in looking after a coma patient. Both Mariola and Javier did everything "for real". From the script, I emphasized that the actors should show their skill as nurses. Only in that way could one understand the total dependence of a body in a vegetative state. As well as nursing, Javier learned to embroider, to give a manicure and to cut hair. All the while, he was also on a strict diet to lose weight. And he did everything with an infectious joy and enthusiasm.)