Patricia López Arnaiz, the troubled mother of 20,000 species of bees; goyified by Anne, and soon heroine The flashes –the new one Pilar Palomero–, it’s a girl.
A actress wounded in every way, who returns to his hometown to shoot the veteran writer of travel novels (Dario Grandinetti) with whom she had, let’s say, a relationship, when she was barely fifteen years old (life stage in which Nina is played by Aina Picarolo). In all these years, the wound has not stopped bleeding.
Jaurrieta’s Nina is none other than Chekhov –that of Seagull-, although it also appears in the play of José Ramón Fernández, also titled Little girl.
“Fernández’s work, which brings the character to the 2000s, has a couple of large ellipses, through which I thought that Nina could become a Western antiheroine. She is a solitary character, who returns to the town, because There is something that disturbs her, and I thought that there, instead of a sad issue or falling in love, there was revenge,” the director tells us. Andrea Jaurrieta.
The western was a man’s thing
One, who has never gone to the cinema conditioned by the gender of the director, always thought that the desired balance, normalization, stopping talking about “women’s cinema” would come when they made westerns, the most cinematic of genres. , and also the most masculine. There are not a few, Kelly Reichardt, Jane Campion, even Alcarras It has something of a western feel to it.
“In my case, it is clear that I wanted to turn the archetypes upside down, that she was the heroine, that the one who took care of her was him, that is Blas, that the motive for revenge was purely feminine, that the blood that is seen wherever it comes from… I wanted to put a weapon on it, and get away from that realism that is assumed of female directors,” explains Jaurrieta.
“The story asked me for it, and the western is a genre that I really like. Although it wasn’t easy, some televisions did not understand that Nina was John Wayne: he could return from a war we knew nothing about desert centaurs, and they demanded that I justify that Nina appeared with a gun because she is a woman, and I didn’t feel like it,” he recalls. “I don’t like the word, but There is something empowering about appropriating a genre as traditionally masculine as the western. “We have come to make films, not to make women’s films.”
Cabaret curtains
In the bar in Nina’s town there are some silver curtains, very cheap cabaret, that seem to connect the film with Ana by day, Jaurrieta’s first feature released six years ago, pandemic through, to the greater glory of Ingrid García Jonsson.
“Yes, it’s a wink, we called it the corner of Ana by day”, recognize. “For me they are Paco candy curtains, the cheapest on the market. I love everything decadent. The two films are connected by the theme of unfolding.”
And both are stylized melodramas. “Yes, although Ana by day it’s more Fassbinder and here I had more on my mind Douglas Sirk of Only heaven knows either Written in the wind.” Even May heaven judge her, of John M. Stahl, which is even noticeable in the locker room. And of course Vertigo, of Hitchcock, evident in the chase scene: “I actually came up with the chase by reviewing Vertigo. And it also has a bit of Death in Venice.”
Andrea Jaurrieta has not seen the recent adaptation of The consent (nor does he need to), but he did read the book of Vanessa Springola while writing Little girl. “I told myself that I was not on the wrong path.” In both cases, there is consent on the part of the minor, but The age of the man is what determines sexual abuse.
“I wanted to qualify all types of Manichaeism, so that it wasn’t a story of good and bad, but in the end she is fifteen years old and he is the one who has the moral obligation to know where the limits are, and how the relationship can affect the girl.” “explains the filmmaker.
“And yet, when I was writing the film, going through script labs, many script doctors told me: ‘She’s not a girl anymore.’ And I said to myself: that’s why it’s important that I tell this story. If they don’t things on the table, it seems that they do not exist. Many girls have written to me to tell me that it had happened to them too, that the film had awakened all that… There are always hidden things,” he concludes.
Story of an obsession
“The lighthouse in the film symbolizes that hidden trauma that always reappears, over and over again. It’s like an obsessive cycle, we all have some obsession that has haunted us forever. The lighthouse determined the light of the film, and also its structure, like a spiral, that wandering around that takes you nowhere. I clarify that fortunately the film is not autobiographical at all, although, like Ana by day, it is again very psychological, of internal conflict.”
Cinema, however, is not enough as therapy, sometimes it is even the opposite: “I had a very bad time with Ana by day, because I felt it was so mine that, when the premiere came, there was a lot of pressure.”
What’s next for Andrea Jaurrieta
“Macrame It is a film that I had to produce with Ivan Luis, but in the end Barbara Magdalena He doesn’t want to direct it, because he prefers to make it as a comic. And I will direct it, I don’t know when. It is the story of two women who have a relationship that changes, power exchange through ropes and sadomasochism. A 70-something woman, and the Ecuadorian who is going to clean her house. She’ll be a bit of Fassbinder The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, The Servant of I know and…”.
It is clear that Jaurrieta is a professor of film history, which allows her to rationalize her influences and show them openly. “In fact, I returned to western, preparing for classes. I saw again The diligence, and I was amazed by the presentation of the characters. Obviously I saw again Johnny Guitar, and there was one thing that made my head ‘catacroque’: a replacement of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at the Verdi in Madrid. I had a stendhalazo with the credit titles…”. And that is very noticeable in those of Little girl, which are wonderful.
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