“One does not rebel out of hate, but out of love,” the writer wrote from his exile. Agustín Gómez Arcosand that maxim could apply not only to him, the protagonist of the documentary a free manbut also that of fiction A Missing Parta father who refuses to stop being part of his daughter’s life. Presented today at the Seville Festival, both films are part of the Official Section (in the case of the first, out of competition), and those responsible for them have agreed on their cinema’s willingness to raise questions.
Battles for the right to affection
A French taxi driver has been looking for his daughter on the streets of Tokyo for nine years when, suddenly, the girl gets into the taxi. That is the narrative premise of A Missing Partwhose protagonist suffers from the denial of family law that applies to foreigners in Japan. Its director and co-writer, Guillaume Senezhas said that he met many fathers and mothers who have gone through a situation similar to the one he reflects, being arrested for breaking the rule, but he wanted to move away from existing stories to “convey empathy and emotion”; in addition to bringing light to a hard story like this, provoking the encounter that makes it possible to reestablish the bond between father and daughter.
Like your previous Our little battlesis once again starring the great Romain Duris (From beating, my heart has stopped by Jacques Audiard, Giraldillo de Oro 2005) and once again addresses emotional responsibilities. Not in vain, the presentation of that film in Japan was the origin of this other one in which the Belgian filmmaker observes “a kind of continuity.” There he learned about those personal stories that moved him so much, in a social context of strong pressures where the failure of marriage and the loss of custody mean severe marginalization, especially for women. Although he has pointed out that the fact of setting the story in the Japanese country was accidental: “This problem is the echo of what can happen in Europe with people who come from Africa or the East. Ultimately he is an outsider in a culturally different, and richer, country from which he is expelled.” As a counterpoint, he gave the example of shared custody in France, in which the legal aspect takes precedence and “the children are not put at the center.”
The director and screenwriter Guillaume Senez (presented by Marta Jiménez). © Lolo Vasco
Yes, he has stated that he saw something “very cinematic” in Japan, although he has said that he fell in love “more of a story than a country.” Furthermore, he wanted to move away from the more topical postcard image so typical of the Western view, among other elements with music, which he uses for the first time in his filmography: “Until now I thought that if I added a soundtrack to my films it would be because it was missing. something, like a crutch for dramaturgy,” commented Senez, who this time has the composer Olivier Marguerite (nominated for César for The night of the 12th and author of the music of OnodaSpecial Jury Prize and best script at the 2021 Seville Festival) to “transmit the debauchery of Tokyo with a color and tones different from those of the story.”
has admitted the way of working which unites his three films to date and which share the presence of a “fragile and a little annoying” male protagonist, who the female characters “make him evolve, grow and transcend himself.” Regarding the issue moral of his works, which have been compared in that humanist spirit to those of his compatriots the brothers Dardenne and Joachim Lafosse, he has commented that he is not in favor of “showing what is right or wrong, but rather things as they are: this happens, it is So”. Not in vain, for the author of this subtle and moving drama that puts the heart in a fist, “making films is asking questions and getting the audience to ask them.”
own voices
The filmmaker has said Laura Hodgman that his vocation was awakened precisely by the Seville Festival, for which he worked years ago. Now he is on the other side, presenting his latest feature film in the Official Section out of competition, a free manwhich focuses on the figure of the writer Agustín Gómez Arcos (1933-1998), exiled and forgotten in Spain despite his success in neighboring France. A figure that, as he explained, he was unaware of until about three years ago, but that somehow has seemed look for it when it had already premiered Antonio Machado. The blue days (2020) and written To the women of Spain. Maria Lejarraga (2022, Goya nominated), his previous works.
“I didn’t want to make another documentary about writers,” she began by saying with a smile, “but I fell fascinated with Gómez Arcos and saw that I had the opportunity not only to vindicate this brilliant character, but to continue delving into those voices that have not written. “History in capital letters, which was silenced, but which gives us much more information than those who wrote it.” Like the author born in Enix (Almería), Hojman likes to focus on those who do not appear in the chronicles as heroes or winners, and in that sense the objective is to tell about this country “through its absences, through what is not is named.” The Spain that, he added Guillermo Rojasproducer of this film and his previous ones, “it couldn’t be and we would have wanted it to be.”
Filmmaker Laura Hojman, accompanied by producer Guillermo Rojas (left). © Lolo Vasco
In this case, however, the profile chosen by the Sevillian director and screenwriter can be especially uncomfortable: “All my documentaries are very political, not partisan, but each one is told from a place, because I think that the form must respond to the character”. That is why he has a more forceful speech, Hojman explained, “because he was like that: very clear, groundbreaking, irreverent, an author who was ahead of his time; It is radical even when read today and that is why I see that it is connecting with very young people.” That club of readers and admirers who feel recognized in the dramaturgical and novelistic work of Gómez Arcos stars in the testimonies collected in his documentary: “A documentary is a subjective work, not a doctoral thesis, so I am not looking for experts or scholars on the subject, but the emotional bond with the character, and also reflective, because I don’t just want to tell a story but raise questions.”
In this case they are presented by figures such as Paco Bezerra, Marisa Paredes, Alberto Conejero, Bob Pop, Lara Moreno o Pedro Almodovarwhich in pain and glory showed the character played by Antonio Banderas, a kind of alter ego by the filmmaker from La Mancha, reading Gómez Arcos. In fact, Almodóvar had already tried to adapt some of his works to film, but in the end they were too “strong” for audiovisual expression, as he comments in a free man. “His work is brutal and crude,” Hojman noted, “but at the same time it is beautiful, reminiscent of Lorca, Cervantes… he had a great love for Spanish culture, and at the same time, he spoke above all of the closedness of the country during the postwar period and the dictatorship.”
The Seville documentary filmmaker has undertaken, once again, the arduous task, from a formal point of view, of transferring literature to cinema, and in this case she has evoked the words of Gómez Arcos through the actress Marisol Membrillo (Trip to a mother’s room by Celia Rico Clavellino, The left-handed son by Rafael Cobos), who in an exciting moment in the film looks at the camera “to get us into his universe.” In the end it is about giving voice, literally, to those who were never heard as they deserved.
