Genre

Privacy and Spectacle

“Talk to Her” tells a private, romantic, secret story, peppered with independent,
spectacular units.I’m referring, as well as to the bull fights and the inclusion of“Shrinking Lover,” to the collaboration and presence of Caetano Veloso, who sings “Cucurrucucú paloma” live, to Pina Bausch,the choreographer of “Café Müller” and ”Masurca Fogo,” the pieces with which the film begins and ends.I’m also grateful for the return to the stage in “Café Müller”of Malou, a member of the original Wuppertal Tanztheater who now teaches youngsters and who, out of sheer generosity, immersed herself in the stage again and enthralled everyone.

“Shrinking Lover”
It’s the synthesis of a silent film, introduced half way through the narration of “Talk to Her.” The decision that it should be silent and in black and white is due to the fact that this is the last genre discovered by Alicia before her accident. An interest which Benigno inherits from her.

As the film didn’t exist, I had to make it. I’d already written the story of a shrinking man, much more detailed than the one inserted into “Talk to Her. ”Originally, it was a story of love and suspense. The man who is shrinking leaves Amparo, the beautiful scientist, and goes back home to a despotic mother whom he hasn’t spoken to in years.It’s an opportunity to be reconciled with her. When Alfredo measures only a few centimeters he moves into one of his toys and lives there surrounded by his boyhood fetishes (books, comics, etc.).Among the pages of one of his favorite books he discovers a letter from his dead father; although it’s addressed to him, Alfredo never received it. In it, his dead father tells him about his mother’s growing insanity and warns him that if anything should ever happen to him his mother will have been responsible. The mother senses that Alfredo has discovered that she killed his father. Alfredo is living inside his electric train and doesn’t want to come out for fear of his mother. In a fit of rage, his mother chases him from carriage to carriage. Just then, Amparo appears (after discovering where the mother lives).She saves little Alfredo and takes him with her to the Hotel Youkali where she is staying.

For obvious reasons, I’ve only used the beginning and end of all that melodrama. I really enjoyed making both fragments. For years I’ve dreamed of the image of the lover walking around the body of his loved one, as if it were a landscape. And now I’ve got it.
In order to prepare myself for the language of silent cinema, I saw my favorite silent films again, Griffith, F. Lang, Murnau, T. Browning...“Sunrise” was essential. I wanted to be true to the narrative and form of the time.I found it more attractive to struggle for accuracy than to break the rules.Except for some inevitable license, all the shots were done with a tripod. I didn’t use a single traveling shot, in the composition of a shot the upper part of the frame is usually empty, the actors walk into frame, the props are authentic, from the mid-20s, and the acting is strictly expressionist, with a lot of care taken to avoid the risks of overacting. I was lucky that both Paz Vega and Fele Martínez could place themselves effortlessly in that situation which is so close to parody without ever succumbing to it. Their performances, naïf, tragic-comic and accurately expressionist, are due solely to their intuition and talent.
The music is also a key element. I didn’t want the typical piano, which is how they show silent films at the Cinematheque. Alberto Iglesias suggested the idea of a quartet; I thought it ideal because if there’s one kind of composition which Alberto has mastered it’s the quartet.I have to confess I find the result very moving. In the best tradition of musical cinema, the melody mingles with the actors’ movements, it gives a voice not just to the actors but also to the captions. The few texts which appear acquire a voice, rhythm and movement with the music. They’re alive. But above all, the music situates the story in the realm of emotion, and brilliantly avoids the danger of obscenity and grotesqueness, both of which can hover around a story like “Shrinking Lover.”

Thanks to Paz Vega, Fele Martínez and Alberto Iglesias, “Shrinking Lover” becomes a
lyrical, emotive, profound fantasy, despite its apparent frivolity.


The Warmth of Color

I also want to welcome to my filmography the director of photography Javier

Aguirresarobe, to whom I didn’t have to explain the warmth of color, because on reading the script he felt the story with the same light as I did. Especially in locations like the clinic, which cinema has portrayed so many times and where I wanted to avoid convention. No coldness, no bluish tones, I told Javier. This clinic is a place where the characters spend most of their time, they live there, it’s like their home. I didn’t want the spectator to be faced with an atmosphere of pain or illness. What I wanted to show was the everyday life of some people who live in that place. We painted the walls a sienna- mustard color and the corridors grayish-green, with a kind of orange padded strip about three feet above the floor. That was my idea. Curiously, there’s a hospital in Bullit, which has the same colors.

For me “Talk to Her” is (pardon the sentimentality) the embrace I’d like to give to all the spectators, sinking against the breast of each one of them as Lydia sinks against Marco’s back, at the party. And embraces must be warm, and the light that illuminates them must also be warm.