When we mention Trip to a mother's room, first work by the Sevillian director Celia Rico Clavellino, we talk about a minimal cinema, modesto, but that does not mean we are talking about a minor cinema. What we are talking about is a cinema that needs few elements to develop, but whose ambition to delve into the feelings and emotions that affect his characters is, simply, capital. Starring Lola Dueñas and Anna Castillo,Trip to a mother's room tells the story of Leonor, a young woman in her twenties who lives with her mother, Estrella, in a house located in a small town of the many that exist in our country. After the death of the father, Leonor and Estrella must put their lives back together. Trapped in a space and a future that offers few opportunities and makes her feel trapped., Leonor decides to go to London to try her luck and, maybe, start a new life. The problem is how to tell his mother, a woman who, affected by the recent death of her husband, has held on to their relationship. From here the film unfolds in a terrain where, as we said in this chronicle, The emotions at play count more than the action. A beautiful story about abandonment, the blame, the hopes, the value of silence, of the little things that populate our lives and that give them meaning. Celia Rico visited the Babel cinemas in Valencia to offer a meeting with the public regarding its recent commercial release. We had this interesting talk with her in which she revealed the keys to this work.. GERARDO LEON
According to production notes, Trip to a mother's room It is a film that arises from personal experience. I don't know to what extent we could call it autobiographical..
I wouldn't say it's autobiographical., but it is very personal. It has many things related to my own experiences because I left home when I finished my degree and you leave with the dream of making your life, just as dedicate yourself to cinema (laughter). And over time you realize that your relationship with your parents has changed., It's a phone-based long-distance relationship.. I often don't have the time I would like to call them., to talk to them and them, however, they are always there. And a little because of feeling that sometimes I miss part of their lives., that this very close relationship that we had before has changed, It generates a kind of discomfort in me, I suppose also related to this moment in which I could already begin to consider being a mother and think about what I would be like as a mother.. And from there comes the idea of reflecting on what filial maternal love is like and if it is possible to reciprocate it.. I think it is impossible to correspond, in the background.
Being such intimate and personal emotions what you reflect, How do you feel about bringing all that to an artistic work? (in this case, a movie)? What is the relationship between what you wanted to transmit and what you see on the screen?? What does it give you back??
Yeah, It's curious because, when I was writing this story, I was very into the characters, of the two, of mother and daughter, like pouring out many of my own feelings. It is written very from emotions and, in that sense, I have opened myself up a lot and explored what emptiness means., what does it mean to be alone, What does it mean to be homesick?. And of course, suddenly that goes through the soul and skin of some actresses who turn it into characters and it goes through a projection that people receive. and you are very afraid, you feel very naked. You feel like you are opening the door to your house and showing your own privacy., In my case even more so because the mother's character is a seamstress and the entire universe that exists in the film is part of my family universe.. But then it is being very comforting because most people are telling me that they feel very identified with many of the emotions that are there.. Even today I received an audio from a person who told me that it made him think a lot about how his family was able to live certain moments in his life and that he had not even considered it.. The other day a girl told me that the film has allowed her to imagine her mother when she is not at home.. Imagine her beyond her role as a mother, which was one of those things I wanted to do with the movie. So, when they tell you all that, Do you think this exercise in nudity was worth it?.
You dedicated the film to your parents. How have you received it??
They were almost part of the filming crew of the film., because we filmed it in my town. my mother, For example, taught Lola to sew [Owners]. She sewed many of the things that are part of the film, cut the dance costumes that appear in the movie, He made the bow ties… Then, somehow, They haven't seen it for the first time because they have been in that whole process and had already read the script.. And the truth is that we haven't talked much about the movie. I think we have a pending conversation. I do not know, The only thing they have told me is that they are very proud (laughter). But if, For my mother, I think it must have been powerful to see Lola interpreting a seamstress with her own gestures because, during the film preparation process, Lola was incorporating gestures that she saw in my mother; a way to move your lip when you move the pedal, or she started painting her nails with the same color that my mother uses. He underwent a transformation process, how to return your image on the screen. My sister, For example, When he saw the movie he told me: it's mom. And it is one of the things that Lola is most proud of.. For her it was the reward for the work done.
The script works like two halves that act as mirrors.. What you see in the first part, has its reflection in the second. Is it something that was at the origin of the project?
Yeah. In fact, I always explained it like this in the management notes I had to sell it to TV.. It is a story that is a diptych, is split in two, and it's like a mirror. That was the idea that was clearest from the beginning.. In fact, when I was rewriting, in those moments when you go into crisis because you don't know if one sequence or another works, I always came back to the skeleton, What was this idea of splitting the film in two?. Why did I put it like that?? First because it is a story of separation of two people who live the process, each from their perspective. And for me it was important to put myself in both places to understand the complexity of this issue.. Also because there are many films that talk about the process of emancipation of young people and almost none of them focus on the people who are left behind., they also have to start from scratch. Also because it is the place that I do not know and the cinema allows you to place yourself where you cannot place yourself in life.. And then because, somehow, The movie, although part of this tension and this generational conflict between both, It starts with a more dependent relationship and ends up becoming a healthier relationship, to be able to tell things one to one. Where the mother is watching over the daughter, then the daughter will be watching over the mother. For that to happen and for the two to see each other in the same place., and not so much as mother and daughter, there had to be a change of roles.
It seems that the conflicts that the daughter dumps on the mother, then they come back at him like a boomerang.
Yeah, exact. Because they are all the time involved in a contradiction. They don't want to say anything to the other to protect them., to take care of her, but deep down there are things that they want to do and that they desire. They both move by the same mechanism. I don't say anything to the other about what I think, but in reality I am doing emotional blackmail. They both work in a very similar way.. They are mother and daughter. In the end we are a lot like parents and I wanted, between them, there would be this repetition of the same errors and the same virtues.
Moving on to more technical issues, One thing that I really liked is that, in your movie, the camera is practically fixed throughout the narration, very anchored to the ground. How did you conceive the planning? What were your references?? I read somewhere that you refer to Ozu.
Yeah, It is not so much as a reference that I have when I plan, but it is more about the themes that Ozu talks about in his films, how your family relationships emerge. At the planning level, for me the space of the house is very important as another character.. In this case it is the house of my mother's uncle.. I first propose the space as a scenic space and with the actresses we read the text and move through that space. A little like to see how they would move if it were real life. There I forget the camera. What I'm trying to do is understand how they look at each other., how they move. From there, I decide what is the best camera position to show that. I try to decide on a single position because in reality when I visualize or plan I do it from my own vision., as a person who is in a place seeing the world. With which, when I place the camera, I can't place it in different places, I want to place it from the place where I want to look at it. On the one hand, I tried to enter that intimacy and peek out as if there were a little hole from which I could look, that is also why the idea of space, of the door. But at the same time with a little respect, away so that we are not on top of those characters and we leave them that room for maneuver.
There is one thing that is related to this and that seems very brave to me.. And it is that, when you consider the frames like this, you give up the close-up game, or the confrontation between shots and counter-shots. I have written a chronicle in which I say that this is a two-and-a-half movie., therefore, those two must be in the image. And I find it interesting that, when one of them is not there, what remains is the emptiness they leave. I don't know if it was something you intended to convey..
Excellent! I love what you are saying! (laughter) Yeah, I had this very much in mind all the time, how two people can occupy the plane, how they can occupy the space and disinhabit it. I always told my team: “the two characters are always, even when they are not there”. For me (with this idea of the diptych, of the mirror), throughout the first part we talk from the daughter's point of view and the daughter is always in the plane, and the mother is always in the background, whether visually or narratively. When it is narratively, (For example, when the daughter is at the factory ironing), the mother is there too, although it is not, because his entire universe has to do with the mother. When the movie reaches the middle and we abandon the daughter and stay with the mother, It happens that the mother begins to occupy the foreground; she stops being a secondary character or a mother to be a person called Estrella. and the daughter, who was called Leonor, he starts to be a secondary character. And that secondary character can be present through a void, of a bed that is behind there, of a ringing of a telephone. As you said, It's a two-person movie and they're always in the shot., are or are not. and when they are (and there, maybe what you say about being brave), I put them sitting on a sofa against a wall that is like anti-cinema because you have no leaks or perspectives that make the image beautiful. But I also didn't want to have a space that wasn't realistic., I wanted it to be a humble house and that also made the spaces very small., that they were locked, that there was that feeling of confinement, of a house that can reach you, not to overwhelm, because they are comfortable in this place, but yes this thing that could be like the cage, like that spider web of the weaving mother that catches you. That's where the idea was.
In your film the details are very important. With them it seems to me, besides, that you build a game of recognition with the viewer that makes them empathize with the film. I don't know if that was your intention..
Yeah, there is an effort to tell everything through objects. Even counting an entire character, what is the father, through an accordion, of a stationary bicycle, of some shoes. And if, they are there, first, as the testimony of things that happen, and they are also part of the narrative, how the characters evolve. A sewing machine that seems like it is not being used and then the mother uses it and connects with that vocation, shoes that remind of an absent father, but boots are also this invitation to march, that gift that the mother gives him. Or vacuum packaging machine, How through that object you can explain the love of a mother who wants her daughter to eat well.. Or how, through a coffee maker, we can explain that there is no person who could open it., what is the father. when I write, I always think that it is not necessary to explain things with big facts, but with little ones. Through these elements it is easier for me to explain psychology, the evolution of the characters, and also that is something that can connect us all.
One of the main elements on which the film is based are its two leading actresses.. Here you brought together two very different actresses, one as experienced as Lola Dueñas, and another younger and less experienced, but for me it fits the bill, as Anna Castillo. How did you work with them??
Yeah, they are formidable. There wasn't a single take that was wrong.. They always do it well. The reflection that I make over time about what my role has been as a new director is that my place in this trio was to set the tone for them., in that game. I set the tone for them and from there they went alone. And this tone always had a lot to do with making everything very minimalist., with debugging it to the maximum. The work involved spending a lot of time doing many script readings., that sometimes they were not literal readings, but to see what is happening in each sequence, what emotions are at play and how the characters feel. We always worked with the idea that they would be impregnated with that emotion., so that later that emotion would be contained. Then, when they were on the scene, all that emotion, All that feeling that we had worked on and deepened had to be hidden so that it could emerge in a small gesture.. This required connecting a lot, a lot, a lot with the feeling, but then hide it and have it appear at very specific times. I don't know what to call it, but it is an exercise like minimalism. From more to less.
I think that silence plays a very important role in your film.. There are many silences, but that never implies an empty space. This is where emotions arise.. At what moment did you think, here I play it?
Yeah, Yeah. It was already like that in the script. It is not that the dialogues were refined at the time of rehearsal or filming., the dialogues were already that brief. Let's say that silence was part of the script. But the script was full of notes about what was happening while there were those silences.. I wanted to play with the silence, but I didn't want to play with silence in this contemplative way, but from another place: What are we saying to ourselves when we are silent and, above all, how we are lying with the words we say. Silence is played more from tension. For example, There is a moment when the daughter knows she has to tell her mother something., like going to London. So, All those silences in which the daughter does not say anything are silences that are worked from the conflict of not knowing how to put words to a wish that can harm the other.. And when the mother is at home alone and wants to talk to her daughter and lives in that silence, It is also a silence that she wants to fill and that you as a spectator also want to fill with the word of that daughter who does not arrive.. They are silences also built from that tension of knowing that they cannot be broken because it would mean interfering in the life of the other..
Your film vindicates small spaces, the house, as you say, but also outdoor spaces, the town. A cinema that leaves the big city and speaks again about those spaces that seem abandoned by the big commercial cinema.
Yeah, The film is set in a town and is also written from my own experience.. I am from a town in Seville and I know that context. In other words, it is already born from an interest in talking about what I know., more than portraying something that is not in the cinema. Parts of the particular and the personal and then you realize that it is more universal than you thought. I wanted that village life to be present in the characters, but I didn't have to show it constantly, that this could come from other places, which was also one of the challenges. That idea of the people comes to build that context that, at a given time, It can be oppressive for them.. I am the daughter of a seamstress, I could follow the steps she follows, or people know my entire biography and how that makes you more eager to build your life without anyone expecting anything specific from you.. Or in the case of being a widowed mother. Everyone knows that you are going through grief and you go out on the street and people already look at you in a certain way.. Yes, there was this idea of showing that part of the town., but, at once, that that could be turned around at the end because, once the daughter goes to a place where you have no one by your side, where life is difficult, It could be very good for you, at a given time, someone give you a cable. In the same way, the mother, For example, She manages to get hooked again on life and her desire thanks to the people of the town who activate her and enable her to sew for people other than just her daughter and to think about something else.. I wanted to reflect that idea of the people from this contradiction, which is my own. I live in Barcelona and I go to town and I really want to go see my family and be calm. And when I get there and I'm there for two days, I want to leave now. I think that is something that has to do with that condition of when we leave a place and we never belong to that place anymore., neither the new nor the old. We are always like between the two places. And that seemed interesting to me to reflect in the film..
It seems to me that the film talks about an inside that is the house and that is the town, and an outside that is a world that we do not see, but with whom he maintains a confrontation. It seems to me that in your film there is a vindication of the inside because there is a desire that out there everything is perfect and fantastic., and here everything is fatal.
Yeah, there is a very nice book by a philosopher, Josep María Esquirol, which i think it is The intimate resistance. And he talks a lot about the need in the current moment to find that center of warmth and refuge that is the house and the home.. And yes there is something of all that. I am, besides, a very homely person. Y, above all, for me, and this has to do with what the psychology of the characters is., There is this thing you say about the inside and outside.. There is a border that I think is very clear, which is the door., What is crossing that threshold between the private and the public?. And this idea of the comfort space, the comfort zone where one is at ease, protected, and that can also be a space where one does not develop sufficiently. So, This thing of claiming the intimate also has to do with that idea of being brave and being a coward., about how much we dare to go out there and how much we are able to return and accept that we still need to get into our mother's bed and have her give us a hug and comfort us., because there is one thing that I feel that way and that is that, when one has parents nearby, despite the fact that they are contrary or that they do not like what the parents project or tell them, one has a center. And when one goes very far away or when those parents are missing, there is a very great idea of disorientation.. And I think that if I dedicate the film to my parents it has to do with that., with that house to which you can return, that comfort center you can turn to when you're unprotected. And that's okay to claim.
