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N.Y.F.F 47th

Broken Embrace

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

 

Q&A with PEDRO ALMODOVAR, and PENELOPE CRUZ

Q: Pedro, could you talk about the idea of a blind screenwriter?

(PEDRO ALMODOVAR): The truth is, for a long time I’ve had a fantasy about making a film about a director who, during the course of the film, lost one of his senses – and the crew, taking some vengeance out on the guy, would then finish the film the way they wanted – fooling him – but the film would actually turn out to be a great success. That would really be a film about the vanity of directors, but the origin of this film came from somewhere else. This film really comes from something much more simple and direct. I happened to suffer for a period time from migraines, and I had to spend a lot of time in dark parts of my house because along with migraines comes a certain kind of photophobia – suffering from getting too much light. So, in the middle of the darkness, I started to imagine something.

I discovered that, even among the darkness and among the pain, the imagination works completely free. I used ideas to invent this alter-ego that was Mateo Blanco, a blind director. I did it just for fun. At the beginning, this blind director was incredibly sexually active. The first sequences that I thought about was about this man physically being very good, and he does the same things that he did when he could see. He goes out, goes to the kiosk, buys the newspaper – he doesn’t read it – and goes to the same place to have coffee. And usually, in these places, he tried to flirt with the girl whose scent or perfume he enjoyed. It was actually kind of a pornographic film about a blind man with lots of girls.

Perhaps it would be better than the one I made! And so, what he would do was follow the woman whose scent he liked best just as he was about to run into her. He’d go right up to the edge of the curb, and as soon as he was about to get into an accident, this woman would grab him and prevent him from having this accident. So, usually the girl accompanies the blind man, and they are very close to his place, and he has the paper, so he goes, “Do you mind coming up to my apartment to read me some articles?” And once they get up there, the woman looks him from top-to-bottom, because I think there’s a way we look at blind people that is almost obscene. You see this happen in the film too.

For example, you see her look at his genitals, and he’s aware of that because people are always aware of that happening. In front of his place, there’s an academy of models, and there’s an urban legend that in the neighborhood, there is a blind man that is the great fucker of the world. And when they go into the street, they fantasize about meeting this blind man. Of course, many of them find him. But, he didn’t know that he was being used by them. Those were the origins. The movie is different. First I discovered what the tone was I wanted for the story. And, I linked this character with a photograph that I took in Lanzarote eight years ago. The photograph is in the movie. I was very intrigued by this photo, and I always tried to put it in my movies, because I always got the feeling that, like in Antonioni’s Blow Up, there was a hidden secret in that photograph. I discovered a way to relate this blind writer with that photo, and that was the true origin of Broken Embraces. 

Q: Penelope, its been about a dozen years since you first worked with Pedro. How has the relationship changed?

(PENELOPE CRUZ): I was almost a little girl when I met him. I was 17, and I was too young for the part that he was writing then – it was for Kika (1993) – and he told me he would write something for me in the future. We worked together for the first time in Live Flesh, and of course, he has changed, I have changed – our relationship is constantly changing. We’ve gone through a lot of years together – working together, and also the strong friendship that we have. That’s why I cannot compare what I have with Pedro with working in any other movie, because I’m not just there working. I’m going through another life-changing adventure with someone who has been so present in so many important moments in my life. 

Q: When you made All About My Mother, would you say the relationship he shared with actors there is the same as in Broken Embraces?

(PENELOPE CRUZ): Yes. Because the first time I worked with him we didn’t do a lot of rehearsals, because the character I played we shot in one week – for Live Flesh – and with All About My Mother and Broken Embraces, it was a similar process preparing the characters. He likes to do a lot of time rehearsing. I know when I start with him, we won’t begin shooting until every department is ready, and everyone has found their characters. And that’s gold for an actor – knowing you are in the hands of a director who is also producer of his own material. You know you’ve had a couple of months to try this scene in so many ways and make all the mistakes, and it’s so rare to find someone who will give you that amount of time to find the character. 

Q: It seems that in your last time with Pedro you were channeling Sophia Loren, and in this film you seem to be channeling Audrey Hepburn. 

(PEDRO ALMODOVAR): What is amazing is that she can be both Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn. But this is just a reference for the hair, makeup, and look of the character. The rest is completely her. 

Q: Also, could you talk about the way your character uses sexuality in the film. And is she really in love with the director? 

(PENELOPE CRUZ): She has to become a great actress in life and a great manipulator, and she has learned how to do that very well almost as a way to survive. She has had a very tough life, and she decides to enjoy every second of that manipulation when she can, because she’s living in a dark space and has no freedom. You only see what she really is a little bit when she’s with the family at the beginning of the movie, and she’s miserable because she has nothing that keeps her happy in life. Then, at the end when she falls in love with Mateo, she has this little oasis of hope and happiness. But it doesn’t last very long. So, she has been forced by life to be a good manipulator and use every weapon she has. 

Q: But is it true love with Mateo?

(PENELOPE CRUZ): For sure. Probably the love of her life… I saw it like that from the moment I read the script. It’s the opposite of what she has with Ernesto. 

Q: There’s a shot when Ernesto Jr. shows up at Mateo’s apartment, and it appears that Mateo looks through the keyhole, giving the possibility that his blindness is not real?

(PEDRO ALMODOVAR): Well, Ernesto Jr. arrives without any kind of warning, so, because of that, Mateo, for his own safety and security, doesn’t open the door. If he doesn’t know someone is coming, he doesn’t open the door. Because he doesn’t see, he doesn’t want to give the impression to anyone outside the door that someone inside is blind, so he looks through the peephole pretending that the person behind the door is sighted. He doesn’t want to let on that he can’t really see. It’s not that Mateo, the screenwriter, is devious, it’s just that this is the kind of protection he’s created for himself. But what I told Rodrigo Prieto, the cinematographer, was that when he looks through, it was very important that a shaft of light hit the eye. That made the moment, for me, seem a little more eloquent.

Q: There are many different expressions of love in the film. For you, which is the most important and which is the most dangerous? 

(PEDRO ALMODOVAR): I think that love is always important, but what happens is that even people who aren’t dangerous become dangerous. 

Q: Early in the film Mateo says that he has an aversion to remakes, biopics and sequels. Is that something that you, both as a filmmaker and film viewer, share?

(PEDRO ALMODOVAR): Yes, that’s right. I have to say, I have no interest in making sequels, or prequels, or heroic films, or anti-heroic films, or superhero films. But everything else is OK.

Q: In many of your films, there’s been a dynamic between mothers and children. Here, the film explores the dynamic between fathers and children.

(PEDRO ALMODOVAR): Yes, that of course is one of the many themes of the film – the father-son relationship. Especially, the father-son relationship where the father is a very important person, and how this importance strangles or hurts the relationship with the son. In this case, Ernesto Jr. is really taken advantage of by his father; there’s really no emotional tie between them. The father is a very unscrupulous man with no real morals, and to him, a son is just a biological fact that implies no other connection or obligation. In fact, just the opposite: he uses the son to spy on Lena, and the “making-of” film is just a way to use his son to carry out his bidding. And the fact that he’s a man who’s presented as very conservative in his politics leads us to believe that he has very little patience with his son’s sexuality. So, Ernesto Jr. turns out to be a character who’s very weak, very fragile. He doesn’t have the means or the power to really confront his father. What’s worse is he will actually follow in his father’s footsteps.

He will get married and have kids, and the kids will absolutely hate him, and the only liberation for them will be the death of the father, as it was for him. The other son in the film, Diego, has the absolute opposite relationship with his father. He has a fantastic relationship with Mateo, who is his biological father, but of course, neither of them is aware of this connection between them. To move away from the topic of fathers onto mothers, in this case, Judith, for me, Judith is one of the most original mother figures I’ve written. Despite her very complex feelings of guilt, she’s managed through all that to create a family. It’s a very powerful thing that she’s done – and perhaps something that’s part of what women in general can do – is that she has the capacity in all her pain to still form a family, even though father and son don’t know that they’re actually related to each other. 

Q: Is there a play going on with Girls with Suitcases and Women on the Verge? 

(PEDRO ALMODOVAR): I wanted for them to make a comedy just because the drama and the suffering in their lives would be more clear if in the background I put a comedy. I decided Women on the Verge because it would be cheaper for me, and I could just adapt it my own way without getting permission from anybody. 

Q: If you could re-edit one of your own films, as Mateo does, which one would it be?

(PEDRO ALMODOVAR): Frankly, that’s something that I never think of doing. I would never think of going back to re-edit or re-shoot. One of the things that is really good about a film, is that once you finish it, it’s over. And you should be aware of what you’ve done, and then move on to whatever your next project is. The only part of the crew that I’m completely faithful in is the editor, and José Salcedo is the editor of all 17 movies I’ve done, and I think he’s great. But, thinking about movies I could do again that I could make better, it would be Kika or Live Flesh.

Q: It seems that this actress is a more effective actress in her real life than onscreen, and what does this say about the act of role-playing in art, and life?

(PENELOPE CRUZ): For me, I saw it as two different things: she’s been secretly very passionate about art, and this art in particular, but she hasn’t had the type of life where she could share that even with her family. It was all about, “What are we going to eat tonight? Or tomorrow?” So, there was no place for her to dream so high. But I really imagined that because she’s spent a lot of time alone, maybe forever, she would have been watching two, three movies every night and exploring that art. And then, she’s forced to use that in her life because she has no choice. She does it better than most other people would do because that passion for acting and wanting to understand human behavior is in her. But maybe if she could have chosen, she would have chosen to express all of that in her work and not have to lie and manipulate in her life.

But there was no choice for her. That’s why for me, the most emotional scene in the movie to shoot was when she goes to meet Mateo, and suddenly that door opens, and there’s a chance that she could do that in her life. And for me, that scene – I imagined what it would be like for someone who has the passion for acting that I’ve had since I was a little girl; someone that cannot even say, “I would like to try to do that.” 

(PEDRO ALMODOVAR): I think that the character of Lena is a character of a woman who’s unfinished. And I think that from the very beginning, she’s somebody who’s condemned to death – in terms of her being an actress, as well as her life as a woman. It’s why it’s as important for her to finish the film as an actress as it is for a woman, because her life is about to come to an end due to this unexpected accident. The fact is, even though she’s always dreamed of being an actress, when that moment comes, that life is really terrible for her. Every night when she shows up to the set, she’s very nervous and very unhappy. She shows up really unkempt and unprepared for her work. We see that she has a lot of problems acting, but we see in the voiceover of Mateo that they have to make many takes, but there’s always one take where she’s great. So, in the end, I put in the three-minute scene of Girls with Suitcases because yes, she got it and did good work. But, it was very painful for her to reach for that ultimate take.

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