“All filmmakers consider what we do to be personal because a work of creation allows you to see through, but in this case it’s also true that it is. literally personal because it’s a documentary film. It’s also personal for actresses who are extremely generously devoted. illustrated with their names and life stories”.
Actor and screenwriter’s directorial debut Itsaso Arana (Navarre, 1985) In his heart is confession and memory. The film with the literary title ‘Girls are good’, blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality A film about a director and four actresses meeting in a country house a few summer days to rehearse a play. The director is Itsaso Arana. actresses Barbara Lennie, Irene Escolar, Helena Ezquerro and Itziar Manero. And they all have the same name in fiction as in reality, and they transfer their experiences to the film.
at times i’m sick of ironyArana made a movie that claims: love and sincerity. ‘Girls are good’ does not exclude either pain or darkness. Among his themes orphanage, loss and heartbreak, but there is a clear desire to approach them from beauty. “While promoting ‘La virgen de agosto’ we said: not the courtesy style. And maybe it is. But ‘Girls Are Good’ is a genre of cinema that still exists, which is not ironic in the fact of being alive. faith in man and who believes that sharing makes us better,” says the filmmaker.
During their stay at home, the girls experience, rehearse, and confess the coolness of their bedrooms and the embrace of trees. Arana recommends a movie where her friends talk directly about life, death, love and art without fear of openness. The girls, and the actresses who played them with them, also admit. Arana goes to a beautiful family memory to explain the confessional nature of her film: “The experience of seeing when my father diedHaving my family’s women around my bed marked me and gave me another dimension of life. Not that I wanted to show it directly, but I wanted to do something with that lesson, with that little wisdom gathered in that moment. This is where the movie begins and where the desire begins. revive these friends I adore”.
Arana’s love for these women is evident in the way he listens and looks at them. He decides not only in his decision to piece together the memories of the actors, but also how he films them or focuses on the way they speak. It is thought-provoking that this emotional view does not exclude desire. The beauty of the actors is shamelessly expressed. “So I had a kind of complex before showing the movie. I thought I’d be understood. There’s so much lacking in telling us, there’s so much anger in all the logic in the world, we felt so much shame and rejectionI understand that a certain way of representing beauty can be disturbing. But I saw my friends and thought: they are extremely intelligent, funny and talented, very beautiful, and I want to give myself the pleasure of enlivening, embellishing, honoring them because I know I brought them into my home and I want to give them a gift,” explains the actor and director.
“I was very careful about it,” admits Arana. “They offered very personal things, very deep and difficult experiences that had nothing to do with beauty. But I had to get the feeling that cinema could be a reality three centimeters above the ground. I know we couldn’t always do that. I got up great but I didn’t want to give up. the seduction and sensuality of bodies in summer. It was important to me and I don’t think it’s not a feminist. I argue that feminism means not imposing the idea of women we have on others, because we fall into the trap they set for us”.
In ‘Girls are good’, this reality, three centimeters above the ground, is expressed in the form of a luminous fairy tale in which everything is contained. a mill, a princess and a frog. And it’s a story where girls shake up the codes of these traditional stories through words and humor.
Another thing that makes Arana’s film meaningfully timeless is the respect for words: “It’s true. in the cinema this word is somewhat slandered, but for me it was a very natural thing. I’ve always been shaky and shy, and when I was 20 years old when I saw people speak in public, I said: The first thing I need to do to become an adult is to learn to speak in public, and when I say public speaking, I was able to raise my voice, even if it was shaky, to share what he felt he had to say. For me, this word is such a big conquest that it had to be in the movie.”