Blanca Portillo plays Teresa of Ávila/Santa Teresa de Jesús in ‘Teresa’ by Paula Ortiz. nun, mystic, writer, and founder of the order of Discalced Carmelites in 1562 and later with Saint John of the Cross, creator of the Discalced Carmelites branch. Carlos Saura made an interesting film about San Juan de la Cruz called ‘Dark Night’ (1989) starring Juan Diego. There was a world film about St. Teresa, ‘Scenes from the Life of St. Teresa’ (1926); ‘Teresa de Jesús’ (1961), a harsh reconstruction by Aurora Bautista and performed by Juan de Orduña; Two television series by Pedro Amalio López and Josefina Molina, the second with Concha Velasco and a moody take on Ray Loriga and Paz Vega as the saint, ‘Teresa: The Body of Christ’ (2007). Now it is Blanca Portillo who brings him to life by moving. between natural environments and hallucinatory revelations The film, adapted from Juan Mayorga’s work ‘Language in Pieces’, is based on the ‘Book of Life of Jesus Christ of St. Teresa’. The film opens this Friday, and we spoke with Blanca Portillo about this strange cinematographic vision of the film. thoughtful nun.
Shooting the film was not a conventional process, given all the mystical revelations of St. Teresa that then had to be done in digital post-production. How was the experience?
I never had the feeling that I was moving in space. We shot in natural environments and I felt very comfortable with this way of working. Moreover, the text was not foreign to me, I was a friend of Juan Mayorga and I knew the job well. But it wasn’t an easy experience, we shot in the middle of summer, I was wearing nun clothes and it was very hot.
So, was the text difficult for you too?
I’m not a religious person and that makes it difficult. It is a very complex text that should be spoken as if it were the most normal text in the world. We also shot with very long shots. A very special experience that I don’t think will be repeated.
How did you discover a character that is both real and mystical like Teresa of Ávila?
There is no historicist vision in the film. It focuses on his internal struggle, not on his historical turning points. There are hundreds of books about him, but what is interesting is his doubts and contradictions. This is the focus of the film, where the character has a very complex burden.
you commented real characters People about whom it is possible to document, such as Teresa herself, Concepción Arenal or Maixabel Lasa. Is it easier for you to work with real models, studying their actions and gestures, when you have to create characters designed by screenwriters and directors almost from nothing?
‘I am playing a person living for the first time in Maixabel. In the case of Concepción Arenal, I had to deduce what kind of person she was, in the same way as Teresa, but Maixabel Lasa is what she is, she exists. We only met once before filming. It would be ridiculous to imitate him, it would be a matter of getting into his inner pain and analyzing him as if he were a fictional character.
So do you approach all characters the same way?
I approach them the same way, yes I have studied them and from there you get a sense of their personality. He needs to feel that the interpretation I gave in the example of Maixabel Lasa belongs to him and that he knows himself. This carries a great responsibility for me.
‘Teresa’ opens this Friday, and performances of ‘The Mother of Frankenstein’, which was performed the day before at the National Dramatic Center in Madrid, begin at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya in Barcelona. How do you perceive the two languages, theater and cinema, and what differences do you perceive?
Both are equally difficult! I encountered personal ones in the same way and today they give me the same panic. As you become better known, responsibility becomes greater and greater. In the theater, of course, the director can go for a walk after the performance has started, the characters have already been created.