|
PRIVACY AND SPECTACLE
Talk To Her tells a private, romantic,
secret story, peppered with independent, spectacular
units. I'm referring, as well as to the bull fights
and the inclusion of Shrinking Lover, to the collaboration
and presence of Caetano Veloso, who sings Cucurrucucú
paloma live, to Pina Bausch, the choreographer of Café
Müller and Masurca Fogo, the pieces with which
the film begins and ends. I'm also grateful for the
return to the stage in Café Müller of Malou,
a member of the original Wuppertal Tanztheater who now
teaches youngsters and who, out of sheer generosity,
immersed herself in the stage again and enthralled everyone.
| _______________________________________________________________ |
|
|
It's the synthesis of a silent film, introduced half
way through the narration of Talk To Her. The decision
that it should be silent and in black and white is due
to the fact that this is the last genre discovered by
Alicia before her accident. An interest which Benigno
inherits from her.
As the film didn't exist, I had to make it. I'd already
written the story of a shrinking man, much more detailed
than the one inserted into Talk To Her. Originally,
it was a story of love and suspense. The man who is
shrinking leaves Amparo, the beautiful scientist, and
goes back home to a despotic mother whom he hasn't spoken
to in years. It's an opportunity to be reconciled with
her. When Alfredo measures only a few centimeters he
moves into one of his toys and lives there surrounded
by his boyhood fetishes (books, comics, etc.) Among
the pages of one of his favorite books he discovers
a letter from his dead father; although it's addressed
to him, Alfredo never received it. In it, his dead father
tells him about his mother's growing insanity and warns
him that if anything should ever happen to him his mother
will have been responsible. The mother senses that Alfredo
has discovered that she killed his father. Alfredo is
living inside his electric train and doesn't want to
come out for fear of his mother. In a fit of rage, his
mother chases him from carriage to carriage. Just then,
Amparo appears (after discovering where the mother lives).
She saves little Alfredo and takes him with her to the
Hotel Youkali where she is staying.
For obvious reasons, I've only used the beginning and
end of all that melodrama. I really enjoyed making both
fragments. For years I've dreamed of the image of the
lover walking around the body of his loved one, as if
it were a landscape. And now I've got it.
In order to prepare myself for the language of silent
cinema, I saw my favorite silent films again, Griffith,
F. Lang, Murnau, T. Browning... Sunrise was essential.
I wanted to be true to the narrative and form of the
time. I found it more attractive to struggle for accuracy
than to break the rules. Except for some inevitable
license, all the shots were done with a tripod. I didn't
use a single traveling shot, in the composition of a
shot the upper part of the frame is usually empty, the
actors walk into frame, the props are authentic, from
the mid-20s, and the acting is strictly expressionist,
with a lot of care taken to avoid the risks of overacting.
I was lucky that both Paz Vega and Fele Martínez
could place themselves effortlessly in that situation
which is so close to parody without ever succumbing
to it. Their performances, naïf, tragic-comic and
accurately expressionist, are due solely to their intuition
and talent.
The music is also a key element. I didn't want the
typical piano, which is how they show silent films at
the Cinematheque. Alberto Iglesias suggested the idea
of a quartet; I thought it ideal because if there's
one kind of composition which Alberto has mastered it's
the quartet. I have to confess I find the result very
moving. In the best tradition of musical cinema, the
melody mingles with the actors' movements, it gives
a voice not just to the actors but also to the captions.
The few texts which appear acquire a voice, rhythm and
movement with the music. They're alive. But above all,
the music situates the story in the realm of emotion,
and brilliantly avoids the danger of obscenity and grotesqueness,
both of which can hover around a story like Shrinking
Lover.
Thanks to Paz Vega, Fele Martínez and Alberto
Iglesias, Shrinking Lover becomes a lyrical, emotive,
profound fantasy, despite its apparent frivolity.
| ______________________________________________________________ |
|
|
|
