Having your film participate in the Malaga Film Festival and at the same time opening the event is a “great” option to quietly have a few drinks and relax without the pressure of competition. This is what a tough director looks like Daniela Fejerman and a ‘rookie’, Elvira LindoIf the adjective fits a woman who, despite gaining fame through literary writing, is a screenwriter and occasional actress.
Féjerman and Lindo gave a presentation in Andalusia this Friday ‘Someone to take care of me’ a four-handed movie starring three women, Magüi Mira, Emma Suárez and Aura Garrido, Having played the three actresses with some initial rivalries and intergenerational jealousy, the grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter will eventually succeed in guiding them towards a path of understanding. Also, Lindo is gearing up for his new novel ‘In the Wolf’s Mouth’ (Seix Barral) on March 29.
The author remembers that the producers of Miguel Albadalejo’s ‘First night of my life’, for which he wrote the script in 1998, when the festival was just starting, invited him to a press conference: “Some journalists told me I didn’t draw anything there”. In more than two decades, things have changed, not only because Lindo is now a manager, but also because of the greater prestige the trade currently enjoys. Is it necessary to explain that the ‘Someone take care of me’ story originates from an unpublished story by the author? In fact, there is no script that Lindo wrote that did not come from one of his stories.
“In this case – says Féjerman – Elvira came to me with a story of about 20 pages that she believed could be made into a movie, and we worked on it in such a way and with such participation that we even thought about who the actresses could be and the actors, looking for inspiration on the streets of Madrid, eventually without raising it in the first place we found ourselves filming the movie togetherS”.
like Woody Allen
Many producers had seduced Lindo into directing in the past, but Lindo never took any effective action until he wrote the story and realized from the outset that there was cinematographic power in that story about those three women. Just in case, I remembered Woody Allen’s quote as he consoled me by saying that this could be part of a storybook: I’m writing a book, but if they pay me, I’ll make a movie”.
Aura Garrido is Nora, an up-and-coming film and theater actress who was offered the lead role in Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’. Her grandmother (Magüi Mira), once a great lady of the scene, was swept into the tumult of the ’80s as a woman due to the neglect of her mother, Cecilia, who was also an actress but had far less luck. starring in rogue cabarets, not so fashionable now. “The movie tells you how reality overtakes you,” explains Lindo. The three learn that age makes us much more compassionate towards others.. A certain distance helps us realize that the mistakes we blame our mothers for are mistakes we can eventually make ourselves. We wanted to explain this without making a value judgment because people are not perfect.
the most complex
Perhaps the most complex character beyond the lead trio and the film, which focuses on the young Nora who accompanies the audience as she discovers some family secrets, is Emma Suárez. “The dedication of all three of them to theater – explains Féjerman – ensures that everything happens in a highly emotional space. The craft makes them particularly meaningful and allows them to unleash with much less filtering.” And here, life’s most punishing Suárez is the one standing at the center of gravity of the story. “Having to deal with getting old and feeling left out in life, When you still feel like you are 30 years old, it is reflected in the evaluation of others”.
The character also helps filmmakers, both young in the ’80s, to take a portrait of a particular generation with which they feel very close. “Women of the time – Fejerman argues – broke with the past and, with a great desire to live, liberated freedoms and broke with the idea that motherhood was a privileged devotion”. Beautiful rivet, because the theme of imperfect motherhood is very fashionable today and has been considered by many since the publication of her book. ‘What do I have left to live’ in 2010, inspired by her early motherhood: “Ours was a more thoughtless generation. Now I am correcting and rereading the proofs for the new edition of that book, happily astonishing myself with the things I dare do without caring. You screwed up a lot, lived your youth and at the same time raised a child. Now there are things that do not seem acceptable to me, but still, considering the result, I can say that it is not so bad”.