“It’s like a wonderful story, beautiful, tender, but also hard,” says Petra Martínez about the film. The actress gets into the skin and soul of Flora, a 72-year-old woman, single, who lives in a small town where everyone knows each other, sometimes too much. She has always left her life aside, dedicated to the care of her parents and also her three nieces, who were orphaned very soon. When the girls grew up they went to the city and when Flora is left alone, with no one to care for, she fears that they will take her to a nursing home. Her salvation is Purita, the woman who has helped her in recent years and the only person she likes to be with. Everyone opposes this decision and both make a decision that will change their lives. But happiness won’t last long. “They are in love, but they would not recognize it among themselves or to others. They love each other very much and nothing is going to separate them. When tragedy occurs, suffering arises from love, not from pain,” says the director on RNE.
Petra Martínez is Flora
Petra Martínez really enjoyed reading the script and even more enjoying shooting the film. “I love that with the age I am and the age that Flora is, that she is a character with her own entity.she is not the grandmother of, she is not the aunt of. No, it’s just her. Flora is an active senior citizen, she is 70 years old and she is independent and that is wonderful,” she said in the program Versión Española, on RTVE. Her character, that of a woman who resists the dictates of society and is capable of marking His own path has certain parallels with María, protagonist of Life was that.
Albaladejo had in mind the great Spanish comedies of the 50s and 60s and of course his beloved Luis García Berlanga, and during filming he thought of someone very special. “I thought a lot about Pepe Isbert when writing to Flora, I was excited to imagine him in the comedies of those years, and I imagined him as the mayor of my film,” he told RNE.
Petra Martínez in Flora in ‘Born to Suffer’.
Adriana Ozores is Purita.
Adriana Ozores actress had a Goya and five other nominations on her resume when she filmed with Albaladejo Born to suffer. It was the fourth time they worked together after The first night of my life, Verbal attack y Manolito Gafotas. “She is one of my favorite characters and I worked on her from scratch, because I have no references in my life that are similar to her. I felt Purita from within thanks to the script, which has a lot of body and a lot of soul. And from there I “I have opened up to the characters’ characteristics, physical and emotional, and I have learned a lot from their simplicity, their happiness, because they are leading the life they want.”
Malena Alterio plays Marta, Flora’s nun niece. Filming this film meant for her to meet and enjoy Petra Martínez and to meet again with Adriana Ozores, with whom she coincided in El palo, her film debut that was rewarded with a nomination as breakthrough actress.
Adriana Ozores is Purita in ‘Born to Suffer’
A feminine and plural cast
Adriana Ozores and Petra Martínez lead a cast of actresses from different generations who share many things, among them, great talent: María Alfonsa Rosso, Malena Alterio, María Elena Flores, Marta Fernández Muro, Mariola Fuentes and Mari Franc Torres. The film was filmed in the Valencian Community, specifically in places in Valencia and Alicante such as Bocairent, Biar, Moncada and Xixona.
One of the anecdotes from the filming occurred in lThe scene in which Purita runs over a turkey with her car. “The turkey became very afraid and ran away across the field, and we had to run across the field and we caught it to repeat the scene. But we took care of the turkey as if it were a queen, the death was fictitious,” he said. in a chat with Las Provincias. Jorge Calvo, who plays an orchestra singer, recalled that he had to sing the theme of ‘Flash Dance’ and ‘Estando Contigo’ at the gates of the Bocairent cemetery. “It was very funny singing for the dead.”
Scene from the movie ‘Born to Suffer’, by Miguel Albaladejo
Notes on the director
Miguel Albaladejo had been attracting attention for years. Specifically from his first film: The first night of my lifereleased in 1998. The good reviews increased with his next work Manolito Gafotas and they continued, with more or less intensity, with Verbal attack y The open skywith a Goya for Emilio Gutiérrez Caba. Then it came Rancor and Lolita swept the breakout actress, and later surprised with films as brave as Puppy y flying I go. Then he changed his register, but he never stopped surprising and giving a voice to people who don’t usually have one, as he does in Born to suffer.
The film enters the RTVE Play catalogue, to which new content arrives every day. Among the new features: Objectswith Álvaro Morte; Elegy and On the Marginsboth with Penélope Cruz; The things of wanting y Tender summer of lust and rooftopsby Jaime Chávarri. The Reader, with Kate Winslet, Dowton Abbey: a new era y Bullet Train, among the international ones.
