Ana Burgueño
San Sebastián, Oct 10 (EFE).- Directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat premiere this October 11 “Nada”, a miniseries about an inflexible Buenos Aires food critic in low hours in which Robert de Niro collaborates, who enters into a hilarious A game of Argentine swear words to introduce each of the chapters.
This comedy comes to the Disney+ platform in Spain, and Star+ in Latin America, after passing through the San Sebastian Film Festival, where the Argentine filmmakers presented the series along with its protagonists, Luis Brandoni and the Paraguayan actress Majo Cabrera, and without De Niro, who was prevented from traveling to Spain by the Hollywood actors’ strike.
In the San Sebastian contest, the five episodes of “Nada” were screened. The character of Manuel Tamayo Prats, now an octogenarian critic, is sensed from the beginning, when he imperturbably affirms in response to a “reduction of passion fruit to octopus carpaccio” that “a crime against humanity” has been committed with the dish.
A CRITIC OF THE UNKNOWN
But for the elegant, meticulous and immutable Buenos Aires man, life will present him with unprecedented situations that he will have to face on his own, such as putting on a washing machine or handling a mobile phone. And all while he has already spent the advances that his publisher has given him for a book about which he has not written a single line. He will end up having the help of a young assistant, Antonia (Majo Cabrera), but not without putting up firm resistance.
Brandoni and De Niro were the only option for directors. “There was no plan B, not even for the rest of the cast. Each character is the ideal for each performer we choose,” says Cohn in an interview with EFE in San Sebastián.
When De Niro read the script he asked the directors to “do a Zoom.” “He had the five chapters with very ‘old school’ annotations. We started talking, he feels a lot of affinity with food, the same as Luis and us. He and Bob also have, like their characters, an old relationship. There was a game of mirrors between fiction and reality,” says Cohn.
The New York actor, in fact, traveled to Buenos Aires years ago because of his friendship with Brandoni, who highlights that, however, he was surprised “by the speed with which De Niro agreed to play a supporting role, when he had not done a television series in their life”.
He believes that his American colleague swears “with great pleasure.” “They are the only words in Spanish that he knows, he knows them all,” says Brandoni, for whom it was “a very attractive challenge” to play such a controversial character, from Buenos Aires like him, which the directors of the film use. series to also portray his city.
THE BUENOS AIRES OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY
Duprat says that Buenos Aires is “very vital in the good and bad sense, where many things happen, where everything is constantly changing and questioned, everything at every minute.”
“And that is very uncomfortable and also very motivating. We chose to live in Buenos Aires, produce and film from there. We could do it somewhere else that was more comfortable, or more peaceful, but there we are,” he points out. They were also attracted to showing “a dying breed” like that of critics, “not so much film critics as culinary critics.”
“We like the harshest criticism because they are the ones that really give their opinion. They are the most enjoyable, in which the critic shares his way of seeing the world. There was a vacant place. That character, who has a percentage of Luis, is a missing link of a Buenos Aires that was very powerful. It is a cult of that, so that young people can find out that there was a spectacular generation, with a lot to say,” highlights Cohn.
Majo Cabrera assures that “Porteños are definitely particular.” “They put a stamp on Argentina, which in itself is particular,” says the Paraguayan actress.
SERIES ON SPANISH CUISINE
The Argentine directors, authors of films such as “Official Competition” and “The Illustrious Citizen”, are preparing a documentary series on Spanish cuisine in which they will deal with such thorny issues as potato omelette with or without onion.
“Our condition as foreigners is going to give us impunity to freely interfere with all topics,” jokes Cohn, who anticipates that the steak and paella are other delicacies that will be talked about.
“The truth is,” adds Duprat, “that I love Spanish food, I think it’s very good, delicious, and I know that there are latent and deep controversies. Not being local is going to help us ask questions.”
His colleague clarifies that for this work, more than “the vision of five-star Michelin chefs,” they are interested in what happens “behind the doors of homes,” what “ordinary people” say. EFE
ab/agf /mcm
(Photo)
2023-10-10 07:55:29
#Nada #inflexible #Buenos #Aires #food #critic #friend #York
