The day after Spain was proclaimed world soccer champion, Itsaso Arana sits down to talk about her first film as a director, Las chicas están bien, which has nothing to do with sport, but with women moving away from patriarchies, from references feminine or of kisses to princes and toads. “I prefer not to comment too much on the kiss from Luis Rubiales to Jennifer Hermoso, because I found out this morning, and I like to find out before speaking,” replies the actress, screenwriter and now director. The day before, Sunday, while others were celebrating a historic sporting triumph, Arana turned 38.
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The girls are fine, which opens this coming Friday, plays a pastoral comedy, feminine conversation and reflection on interpretation. Four actresses (Bárbara Lennie, Irene Escolar, Itziar Manero y Helena Ezquerro) They get together to rehearse their next play with a director (Arana) in a rural house. In an adjacent barn they put up a four-poster bed and put on period costumes, so The Girls Are Fine mixes personal conversations, confessions of fears, passions and vital memories with rehearsals, and with an added contribution of confusion: the on-screen actresses have the same names as the real performers who play them.
From the left, Itziar Manero, Irene Escolar, Helena Ezquerro and Bárbara Lennie, in ‘The girls are fine’.
The film was born from the aspiration of the actress from Tafalla (Navarra) to create something completely her own, and confirms and denies her confessed “exacerbated perfectionism”. Because the script was meticulously written, because Arana, who also plays a theater director, previously interviewed her four fellow actresses to use autobiographical elements in the plot, and those details have been surgically transplanted into the script. But at the same time, during the filming, Arana decided to open up to any event, to the heads of technical teams, most of them newcomers in her position, to contribute ideas. “The same has happened with the editing,” she says. “Having done it quickly, there is an aroma of lightness and documentary commitment that I craved. If I had had more time, I would have fallen into a more thoughtful way…and that went against the film,” she says with a laugh.
Man does not have to be the engine in anyone’s life. Or yes, if we want him to be. But leave it up to us to decide.”
There is only one man on the screen, a boy whom the quartet meets at town festivals. “Man does not have to be the engine in anyone’s life. Or yes, if we want him to be. But leave it up to us to decide. Many people when they see the film are surprised by that character, played by Gonzalo Herrero, an actor I love, and with whom I have worked since I was 8 years old, because he was in my theater company. [La tristura]. He doesn’t change the plot, and I confessed to him that I had come ‘to make it pretty’, as has happened so many times with women in the cinema, that I dared to wink ironically”, reflects Arana, who never hesitated to make her directorial debut at the time he acted “It was a self-imposed trap. That place of honor between the camera and the actresses allowed the plot to be porous, for life to enter the script. There are moments that I hope will be enjoyed as vibrant and alive because we were rewriting the script within the shot. It has provoked a strange metafictional formula. Seen with hindsight, it seemed to me a total audacity, I don’t know if it was naive, but it did show somewhat light courage, an act of faith in what was mine”.
Itsaso Arana, yesterday Monday at the Café del Nuncio, in Madrid. JUAN BARBOSA
By doing something truly his own, Arana refers to the fact that the company La tristura is made up of three creators, since his scriptwriting adventures have been either as a couple (with Jonás Trueba he co-wrote La virgen de agosto), or collectively (now he writes with Trueba and actor Vito Sanz a new script, which will be Trueba’s next film with Sanz and Arana as protagonists). “I had to prove myself,” he says. However, he has done it with a choral story. “Of course, it is a collective effort, in which my colleagues have generously shared their life lessons, they have been transparent. They are irreplaceable and I can’t imagine the film with others. What is in the background The girls are fine? A walk through my head, it is a feral film between genres because that is how it came out”. And he insists: “Cinema is the art of frustration. I wrote for that house, for those women, to avoid the danger of falling into frustration. It’s a free movie.” As was the previous and only medium-length film by him, John and Gena, in which he interviewed his ex-partners, and which was only seen at the Punto de Vista festival.
In daily life I try not to act too much… and if I do I don’t get caught, I’m good.”
Among the tricks that the public will enjoy is the lightness with which it wraps up deep themes. “I fled from solemnity, even though the conversations are confessional. The emotional intensity is usually twinned on screen with a solemnity that does not occur in real life. You can cry and make jokes in funeral homes. As on the screen you see actresses playing actresses, we do not hide that we are strange beings made up of a tool that allows us to quickly jump from deep to light topics. In daily life I try not to act too much, I prefer to be honest… and if I do I don’t get caught, I’m good”.
His dad’s death
Other of the seeds from which Las chicas están bien germinates are fears on stage —illustrated with a curious anecdote about how to overcome them before starting a performance— and the death of Arana’s father, surrounded by his wife and daughters. Talking about her slowly, reflectively, the Navarrese plunges into that memory: “he gave me a different dimension of life. I felt that I would never see her the same again, that she suddenly connected with the basic foundations and with our reptilian background in a fierce way. Unfortunately, sometimes we disconnect with those experiences. In short, that gave me courage in the jump to the direction”.
The starring quintet of ‘The girls are fine’.
In this defense of horizontality, with few impositions from the leadership, Arana explains that he still believes in “the utopia that cinema can improve people.” He outlines the idea: “It is a very class-oriented industry. That’s why it seems that in the film we move away from another world, without actresses who are better than others, because I believe that the wisdom you gather in life is your greatest wealth. There’s no more”. Doesn’t this bring us to Éric Rohmer? “I don’t know, maybe in an indirect way, because Jonás [productor del filme con su empresa Los ilusos y pareja de Arana] they impose the Rohmer imprint on it [carcajada]. It is an illusory inheritance. My references have been more Matías Piñeiro or Céline Sciamma, bridging the gap and with the greatest humility. My life is surrounded by acting and cinema, true. I was born delivered to this, dominated by my passions. Although I have chosen it that way ”. Another legacy of Los Ilusos: their releases at the Czech Karlovy Vary festival: “I don’t have impostor syndrome, my career has progressed in steps, I like the trail I’m leaving. Because I don’t believe in the bubble or the current hyperhormonation of the cinema. Think of the red carpet, the media attention we received… In Karlovy Vary I would see us at the premiere, and I would laugh. I have learned not to believe the story. And not because of something cynical, but out of gratitude I attend the premieres and these festivities… with humor. Nobody is waiting for my movie.”
A shoot is the full extension of the personality of the person who directs. And I believe that if you are well surrounded and with humility, beautiful things come out “
What happens to Arana with the summer? Las chicas están bien takes place and is released in summer, like La virgen de agosto or You have to come to see her, which Trueba premiered last year, with Arana in the cast. “I like summer, it is my ideal season, you talk in a different way and I like the state and plasticity, close to relaxation, of the bodies in these months… Although the summer in Tafalla is so different from that in Madrid” he points out. “This year I am spending it filming a series in Bilbao [Detective Touré, para TVE]. I don’t feel like I jumped from acting to directing. It’s more of a dance step, not something alien. Acting is like writing, and writing is like directing. With its different tools, true. A filming is the full extension of the personality of the person who directs. And I believe that if you are well surrounded and with humility, beautiful things come out. At least, I tried to like myself on set.”
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2023-08-22 08:01:57
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