a marriage, Javier and Adela, They live in a country house in the mountains, away from any sign of civilization. There they welcome Irene, a fifteen year old girl without resources who, we understand, is pregnant. At first, It seems that the attention of the couple to Irene responds to their concern to help her in such a difficult situation.. But, As the plot of the film progresses, it seems, we see that there is something more here. Although Irene seems grateful for the love and understanding that the couple offers her, as time passes, she is feeling more and more uncomfortable, to the point of wanting to escape from the house. But Javier and Adela will do everything possible to prevent it.. They have a special interest in Irene not leaving: they want the baby growing in their womb.
With these elements, the director Manuel Martín Cuenca traces, con the daughter, a disturbing story. As he did in previous jobs, the argument is just the casing, the frame of a painting that invites us to reflect on the hollows of the human fact. Nooks and crannies, corners that, however, as he says in this interview, They are part of our essence. with this piece, the person responsible for films like Cannibal o The author It questions us about that neat image of our nature that we build from the mass media., supported by our own tendency to reject any stain on our neatness and, therefore, false file. We are as we are, not as we say we are.
the daughter opens in theaters this Friday, 26 January.
While it seems that, from certain movements, the role of motherhood is being questioned, you introduce us to two women who fight to be mothers.
Yeah, is that questioning the importance of the fact of creating life and ignoring that, today, that gestation of life, obviously with the collaboration of man, It comes from women, it's stupid.. What happens is that the social institution, etc., it does not let us see a fact that is essential: what is a superpower, what is the ability to give life, without which none of all this would exist, we wouldn't even be here, we wouldn't even be talking. Ignore that kernel of the matter, well... That's why I tried to go to a story that could have happened now and twenty thousand years ago, in a cave. Of course medicine has developed a lot, but it is a lie that allows all women to be mothers. In fact, There is a high percentage of infertile women and couples who cannot achieve it. Me, on the whole motherhood thing, What interested me was what it means to bring life.. At the other vertex, we meet a woman who decides not to have children. In this case, I think they have been socially stigmatized for a long time because they have been considered useless.. I was very interested in starting from that place., explore that character and their partner, that fight, that frustration, that pain. At the same time, at the other pole, there is a young girl who gets pregnant, almost by accident. But, What happens when that life is taking shape?? At the beginning of the movie, there is a rational pact between them that could apparently work. But it is a very fragile pact because the decisions that human beings make have very little to do with reason and logic., although now they want to make us believe. It has to do with emotions. What happens to these two women, with that man there in the middle, It's very emotional. And when everything is very emotional, things are not logical.
Regarding irrationality…
Irrationality in the best sense: emotional. Neuroscientists show that the mind is not just the now; we are not a processor, we are not statistics. The information, memory is written in emotions and the 90% of the decisions we make are unconscious, emotional.
In that sense, there is a confrontation in the marriage in which, somehow, he's trying to maintain that appearance of rationality, in the face of her irrationality that is expressed in her desire. The impression I have is that one drags the other and they end up losing their rationality..
Fully. A computer program would have given this couple two children. They have a house, they have work, they have the desire, everyone knows them in the city, They have all the credentials to be good parents.. But that rationality, imposed on others, in this case about the girl, makes them commit a great injustice. Indeed, In the end they end up losing that rationality. They are so right that they are not right because the reason, which is an important part of being human, It is not the fundamental pivot. The fundamental pivot is affection, the disaffection, the number of decisions we make that have to do with feeling good or feeling bad. For example, at first, The girl doesn't know if she wants to give them the child or keep him., but you also have the right to change your mind. It seems we are in a world where everything is black and white, everyone is digital, they are all zero or one. And it's not true. The world is not like that, it's analog. That is to say, It's much more complex and that's what I'm trying to tell..
In your films you have your sights set on ordinary individuals. Within those subjects, however, outside of a certain idealization or standardization, there is always something crooked that hides.
It is the exploration of the common being to which, Luckily or unfortunately, They have to live some stories that I wouldn't like to live because I don't know how I would react.. I would still react the same as them, in an unfair way and crossing moral lines. I like those types of characters. The character of Cannibal it's a monster, but it is true that he has the appearance of a common man. Here they are really common people. They are a couple who want to be parents.. What, besides, They are integrated into society, who have suffered, who feel legitimized by that pain. The interesting thing is that, somehow, good guys become bad guys simply because they change position, why, suddenly, They have the power to do it. And that's what really interests me, make people understand that evil does not belong to psychopaths, but it belongs to ourselves.
there are no borders, so.
Human beings are capable of doing the best, love, compassion, what has to do with the encounter with the other, and the worst, what is barbarism, the atrocity, rape, which always has to do with castling with oneself, with self-absorption. The moment one stops thinking about the other, the act itself is terrible. Rape is a terrible physical act, almost worse than murder, and the very act of making love between two people is something wonderful. They are doing the same, but in a different way. In one, there is one thinking of the other, there is a meeting. In the other there is one who uses the other person solely as an instrument of his desire.
I was listening to you and I was thinking if, somehow, the film does not come to expose the fact that normal never fully exists.
It is normal, The normative is an almost bureaucratic invention. The normal man does not exist, nobody is normal. In any case it is common. “It is common that in Valencia there are more people who work as civil servants than in other places”, to say something. That is something that changes depending on the time., but the normal thing is a trial. who is normal? Are you normal for being a city council official or am I normal?, I'm a film director? I have gone on and on talking about this movie about things that I feel like, in many cases, people don't want to hear. Sometimes I feel like a movie like this can be disturbing [for the public] in the sense that they recognize that what happens is true. And that bothers. It would be better if they were two psychopaths, It would be better if they had nothing to do with us. In the end, Normality is the statistical average of an algorithm that has nothing to do with how human beings function.. It's amazing. A way of structuring information and thinking is being imposed that has nothing to do with how we are.. That is why there is more and more information and less knowledge, because knowledge needs an emotional container and a journey. It's not the same as being at home clicking the button and watching twenty minutes of a series., and then another, where there is no physical experience, there is no trace and, therefore, there is no knowledge, to do the act of coming to the cinema. The movie is different.
As also happens in Cannibal, at a given moment crime appears here, the murder. To what extent do we harbor within ourselves that capacity to commit that crime??
I believe that any human being is capable, in the right circumstances, to commit murder. I am absolutely convinced, as Patricia Highsmith probably was, one of the great writers of the 20th century. The interesting thing about this debate is not whether or not we are capable of committing murder, but where do we draw the line between what is permissive and what is legitimate to commit it?. For example, In wars it is socially permitted to kill. What happens is that most of the time, Always or almost always when we are aggressive we are embedded in a social apparatus, in a context and in a group that legitimizes us to do so. No one declares war by saying: “I am very bad and I am going to hurt the other”. Everyone who declares war does so because they believe they should., including the nazis, who thought they were going to save Europe.
In the right circumstances, would they drag us into a war?
Under the right circumstances they would drag us into a war and convince us to legitimize a war. It has been seen with the pandemic. In the right circumstances, with fear, the ability to drag people is tremendous. Evidently, in democratic societies, where all this is questioned, It is more difficult because voices can always arise, but the trend is there. During the pandemic, I have been surprised by the tendency of most people to obey. I have been surprised by the obedience of society, and not for the better, especially. In totalitarian societies it is much easier and even more so now with all the technological capacity we have..
One thing that interests me about your films is how you present the plot.. You respect a certain classical structure, but, on the other hand, no. There is not so much a causal fact, as an initial situation of which we are discovering the details, and there arises the conflict.
I wanted to establish a physical structure, from space. I am very interested in landscape as a catalyst for what is happening inside the characters and the narrative.. There are those who say that, in my movie, the landscape is a new character, but I don't think it's that much, but a kind of black curtain where it is located and that roots what is happening. In a gestation process, That brings me to a structure., more than three acts, of three blocks. In the film there are two very large time jumps in which we see the evolution of the girl's birth.. This allows us to avoid talking about many fundamental things in history.. In a first block, We end with a scene in which there is a promise of understanding, but, when we find them again, We already know that they deceive each other. And it also happens with the last block, the one who shows us what things are like after the murder. That couple has already crossed a line from which they will not return.. I have tried to make a structure that would show the essential dilemmas of the characters, his discovery, as if their masks were being revealed. But there are no big surprises either., nothing happens that you can't imagine. Maybe, the end, Yeah, but it is an absolutely logical ending. The thing is that the public is not used to taking things to the limit. That is the final approach: there is another way. They have embarked on such an irrational path outside the law that there is no other way to solve this issue than with a duel in which one of the two is going to die.. That's where the classic and not so classic things come out., as you say, but I'm not that aware. My reasoning for writing the script has to do with the things that seemed to me to be fundamental.
There is a tempo of the film that contains, by himself, the drama.
Yeah, For me it is a fundamental tempo. I say that in silence and in the body is where the most important part of cinema is., not in words. I like to tell what is not said more than what is said.. In fact, there is a huge decantation process, first in the script, then in the filming and, after, in the assembly, in which everything has to be well told with the image. I am removing dialogue phrases and explanatory sequences until the end. The part of cinema that interests me most is that which is contained in the sequences that are silent..
To finish, I wanted to ask you about that sequence in which the policeman arrives at the house looking for the couple., and surrounds her. The sound work in that scene caught my attention., the amount of things you count on with sound and the amount of tension that is generated. Sounds create expectations, but, at the same time, They are sounds that come from nowhere, They are sounds of nature.
Yeah, It's something I really like to do.. He's in the filming a lot, although then we work each layer, first in the image montage and then in the sound montage and the final mix. It took us two days to shoot that sequence.. I never use story-board, but I'm looking for the images, like the sculptor who is carving the stone. The sound comes from what I'm rolling. I find that fascinating because, within a fictional structure, It is an almost documentary filming job. Then, you power them or not. The sound is mental, it's not realistic. It's what you hear.
Deep down you are doing script writing with sound.
Of course, Of course. Fully. I place the camera many times for sound, not by image, knowing that I'm going to see something, while I listen to another.
