a marriage, he and she, already entered into old age, They share the last years of their lives in an old house full of dust and objects, in appearance, useless, symptoms, memories, reflections of his own decrepitude. The day begins and he gets out of bed. After looking out the window, He turns off the television and heads to her room., lying on side, she still looks asleep. He removes the quilt that covers her body. Then, He removes her nightgown to reveal her buttocks.. He sits in a rocking chair and, with a small camera that he takes out of his pocket, takes a photo. After, ignoring that she is already awake, He takes an intimate garment of hers and rubs it all over her body..
This is how the latest feature film by Mexican director Arturo Ripstein begins, The devil between the legs. Shot in beautiful black and white, The film tells the stormy relationship of this couple who already lives retired from the world, but whose common existence is not free of conflicts. Despite having a lover, he lives corroded by jealousy. Ella, instead, She does it with the hope of clearing up that doubt and the desire to be understood.. In between the two, a young maid serves as a witness to the events that accompany this stormy coexistence of two people who refuse to stop being.
Emerging from the pen and imagination of screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciaescudero, Ripstein's partner and creative partner of much of a common filmography, The devil between the legs It is an unusual proposal within the contemporary cinema offering. A film that tells us about the twists and turns of love, of the lack of understanding between individuals, of its many contradictions and, above all, of that desire that moves us, gives us support and, they tell us, never goes off. With Paz Alicia Garciaescudero we talked about the profession of the film writer and his characters. we were talking, definitely, of life.
The devil between the legs opens in theaters today, Friday. ABC Park.
I once asked Guillermo Arriaga about the role of the screenwriter in cinema and, on that occasion, He claimed the need to make his work visible as a very relevant part of the process of creating a film. Now, with the boom from television series, It seems that the focus has been placed on you, but this has not always been like this, even less in the cinema. How do you value this fact??
Man, it feels terrible to me. Now that it is fashionable to divide by gender at festivals, where there must be the same number of women as men, what I'm wondering is, At what point is my movie about men?? By the director? Or do I not exist? I don't count? Because the one who tells the story is me. The director, also, of course. I don't reduce it at all, but there is a very clear division by gender that what it does is that, to my guild, men and women, invalidates them, takes us out of circulation. Because if this film were written by Ripstein and directed by me it would be on the list of beneficiaries of the gender division at festivals, For example. Oh well, I am a screenwriter and we are the dark guild. I have been lucky because Ripstein has given me the space, made me visible. I don't ask for fame, but it does make me angry to be excluded, on both sides.
For the information I handle, this story starts from you, although it is also true that, as you say, It is directed by Ripstein with whom you have a very long creative collaboration. Regarding this, about the fact that your characters are in that last stage of life and you already have a long relationship of building stories and characters, How do you place this film within that common collaboration or in your own career??
This is a very personal film without being autobiographical.. I am not the protagonist, But I reflect myself and many people my age reflect us in it.. Relationships go through stages and when you reach the end of life, couples tend to lock themselves in. Come less friends, you have left work and home becomes your refuge and your cage. So, What happens to a loving relationship when it becomes your refuge and your cage?? On the one hand, That's what I wanted to investigate.. Y, on the other hand, I wanted to talk about female sexuality beyond aesthetics, beyond age. I wouldn't say I was looking to vindicate her., because I am not a woman with a message, but talk about it because it is a taboo topic, is prohibited. I'm sure that neither you nor I imagine our parents having sex.. even less, talking about it with them, ¿no? I really wanted to talk about these two aspects., the confinement of a couple and the sexuality of both.
One tends to think that old age is a calm stage where everything is already resolved, but, for your movie, this is not like that.
¡No! (laughter) I would tell you that old age is horrible and everything comes with it except calm.. The calm would be if you imagine my grandmother, that to the 50 years he dressed in black and stood aside. This is not the case, I don't say mine, of our generation. Suddenly, our lives are ending. And it's not even by choice, but it is pushed by the generations that come, for the new tastes that prevail. You are taken out of circulation because you already represent an old guard. No, old age is not tranquility and calm. On the contrary, is the time I have left. Every day you are physically worse, every day I have less chance to do my things the way I like and every day I have more uncertainty and more fear. Afraid of how I'm going to grow old, afraid of the years ahead of me.
You have talked about the relationship with youth, and I wanted to ask you precisely about that, for the fact of how, in contemporary society, there is an excess of focus on the young and the new, and what is considered old is left aside, escondido. Your characters are like this, hidden from the outside.
It's very curious because my generation, precisely, It was the one that took as its flag John Lennon's words of not staying anyone over thirty years old. At that point I must have been nineteen and it seemed very fair to me. And we were creating a world, (I'm talking about the generation of 60, of the French May) where youth became a value to be achieved, not in one step (y, therefore, passenger) that it was going to end. We created the world we are now suffering. The world that now marginalizes us. We never calculated that we would grow old. We never calculated that Mick Jagger would be seventy-eight years old (laughter).
Y, however, there it is still.
Yes and, every proportion kept, me too (laughter). And many of us continue, but technology has changed, The ways of telling stories have changed and cinema has suffered, particularly, of a kind of impoverishment where the stories are increasingly schematic, more clichés, more brides who elope dressed as brides at the altar, They climb through windows and jump off trains. That is the commercial cinema that is prevailing and that is shaping the viewers of the future or, at least, of the years that I have left alive.
The film is structured around the pulsating presence of sex, but there is also the question of jealousy as a central element of the plot. Maybe we're back to the same thing: one believes that, over time, start controlling your emotions, but in your characters we see that it is not like that. I was going to propose an alternative title for the film that would be “The Devil is in the Mind.”.
In the case of the husband, probably, Yeah. In her case, no. I believe that we suffer from jealousy 90% of the people. It's rare people who honestly say, "I'm not jealous". It's not my case. But I think that, to the extent that aging closes off other opportunities, It cages you and jealousy finds fertile ground to flourish.. I don't think my protagonist has had that same jealousy as always.. as he says, “When I met you you were already alive, released”. But obviously, in confinement, the lack of possibilities, and I don't mean sexual, he also left his job, children tend to live abroad or, at least, They no longer appear at their parents' house more than once every six months., The emptiest life is a territory for jealousy to flourish.. It is the perfect seed. He knew she had a past and he didn't care.. And they probably had a reasonably good relationship in the early stages.. But to the extent that cloistering dominates, Jealousy grows and is the old man's only reason to live., what makes him feel alive. Which, in a certain sense, it's understandable. I'm not saying that it's commendable., but understandable. She also has cells. When the maid tells him that he has a lover, the only thing that worries her is, and is he younger? It is the jealousy of the possible displacement.
Regarding her, The film addresses an issue that is that of denial, sometimes, of our own nature. There is a tension in her of a something that hides, but he is all the time fighting to express himself and get out.
She wants to become a character. She is a woman who feels like she wasted her life., but he would give anything to become a romantic character. Feeling jealous, instead of reacting against, not only accept it, but it feeds it. She keeps a meticulous record [of grievances] because that makes him feel like a “loveable” character. I don't want to be who I am, this elderly person who lives locked in the house, but I want to be a character for whom the husband would give his life. I could kill her with rage, and that to her, instead of angering her, feeds her. It's what's left.
When today so much is fired against that romantic love, I think it is very brave that you have built a character who has a desire about something that could go against the current., but that has its own vital meaning.
Bueno, I have always been very against the current. It's not even voluntary, that's how i am. As they said when I was a girl: she is “weird”. But I completely understand the need to build a character for yourself and build a story around your character that gives your biography a narrative.. Because without her husband's jealousy and harassment, her biography would be a daily occurrence., boring… no events. And what she wants is to stop being her.
When I saw your movie, I remembered Amor, Michel Haneke's film, which is also a love story in the last stage of life. But unlike your movie, in Haneke's the characters try to understand each other, to understand each other in a very…
Loving, like the title.
Exact. Instead, your characters, instead of looking for that harmony, They are looking for permanent shock and, in that sense, It's a more carnal movie.. Haneke is Austrian. You are Mexican. To what extent do you think culture is related to your characters and the story?
I think very much. Yo, like mexican, I am an heir to the Hispanic thing of stark realism. For example, Haneke's wife is a perfectly normal woman, pretty and groomed. And overnight Alzheimer's develops and I don't know if it will be like that in real life.. Yours is a clean house, no medicine. It is a house that is everything that houses of decay are not.. And Alzheimer's, obviously, is the decadence. In the case of my movie, I did not want to attribute the deterioration of the relationship to an illness. Neither he nor she are sick. He has deliquescences, but he is not a crazy man. He is a crazy man when it comes to women.. And neither does she. What she does is fulfill the demands of what, in your head, she thinks they are going to turn her into a romantic character. And he does it perfectly, until the end, when you say to him, “Now I have fulfilled your dream.”. “I went with the man from the hotel.”. Because? out of desire. She goes to fuck him, but basically because she wants to be caught. The husband no longer stops with her. And she wants to fuck, He has a crazy desire to be a sexual object. And I don't mean that pejoratively.. I don't think it's bad to be a sexual object.. Desire in women (And that is a very personal point of view of mine.), probably because of millennia of culture, wakes up, It turns on the moment it feels desired. I think women don't like to see a naked guy.. They are excited to be seen naked and that duality is what makes her insist on becoming a romantic character and going to look for sex in a hotel in the most stark way possible..
You were telling me about what the house is like in Haneke's film and, Obviously the house in your film is also a fundamental element. I understand that there must be a translation of your writing into the final cinematic form. I would like you to tell me about how you conceived that house so dismantled in your imagination., when you built the story and the importance it has in the story.
It is quite similar to the one seen in the movie., except it didn't have a garden, I had a smaller yard.. Why did I need a house with this geography?? Because there is a third element in this story that matters a lot to me., what is the maid, who goes from being a witness to daily attacks, of the confinement, of the suffocation that both characters have, to take matters into their own hands and become the flaming finger of God. Because the little maid, just like her, I would like to be a romantic object. Surely you have had an open and very active sexual life, when he goes out on weekends, tomorrow, afternoon and night, with whoever is in front of him, but she has never felt idolized. She has never felt loved and when she discovers that the husband loves the wife and the wife disdains him, is when he says, It can't be because I haven't been.. That's why it becomes the flaming finger.
That space is very specific. Has, as you say, a geography of its own that I don't know if it is symbolic in some sense or it was simply a background that you liked for some other reason.
No, no. The house was absolutely central. It's the cage. A cage that is not even a golden cage. It's a dusty cage, full of junk. It's the house of decadence and I cared a lot. Normally, I participate a lot in the search for locations.. In this case, We were lucky to find this house that is so labyrinthine and that allowed us, above all, the possibility of having the maid on the other side, opposite, spying, attesting, reporting. When she is masturbating, the little maid is on the other side of the garden, watching it and drawing conclusions.
Perhaps the most difficult thing to achieve in a film are characters that are not flat and have many layers.. I loved your characters because, on the one hand, is how they behave, but then you perceive that there is something invisible that is underneath the actions and that shows what they really are. As a writer, how do you work the characters? That invisible part, but tangible, is it marked in the script? What changes do you perceive with the actors??
Normally and, in this case, very clearly, I write with the actors in mind. Even in this movie, that I thought was not going to be done. when I wrote it, I wrote it for myself, but I thought that, by the theme and the age of the protagonists, We weren't going to find a producer who would fit him.. We found them. either way, I always write with actors in mind because, for me, The rhythm of the dialogue is very important and the actors adjust it to their tone of voice and the way they speak.. In this specific case, Silvia Pasquel's raspy voice makes a contrast that seems fantastic to me with the high voice, of whistle, of the little maid. We had worked with both on the previous film, and it seemed fantastic to me to combine these two voices in this duel of two women who, in the background, They have the same conception of life.
As I told you, I was very surprised by the layers that these characters have., that duality that moves between them, that something that is behind, what is not said, but that gives them true character. From what you mentioned before, That's very unusual in contemporary cinema., what makes your film more valuable. How do you approach the characters in that sense??
For me, the characters are built as I go along.. As they begin to act and speak, because for me speech is very important in my films. For example, In the first scene we see Silvia Pasquel, He meets the maid and tells her "what are we going to do for lunch?"?” Y, with satiety, the criadita tells her, the same? And she answers: no, let's make pasta soup. You can make it out of stars, of letters, and they are different, it's not the same. That's where the humor and sarcasm of my characters comes in.. We begin to see that, although she is defeated, maintains a sense of humor and joy. Ella, when he gets ready to go to his tango classes, is happy, disguises, she becomes the other she wanted to be. So, you let the characters be. It sounds like a common place, but, if you have confidence in history, you allow the characters to have contradictions and dualities that do not correspond to a scheme, that correspond to the story. You lock them in a house, like they were lab rats, and let's see when they calm down, when they crash into the bars, when they bite each other. You should know that the characters are not univocal. In all cases they have layers.
Another theme that the film addresses is the question of memory.. one of the characters, will say: “no one rules in memory”. What role does memory play in this story and in general?? memory, Is it a refuge or a trap?
It's both. Every refuge is a trap, I would tell you. When you're caged in a house, the only thing that is alive is memory. A memory that becomes your worst enemy, that goes around in your head and that you cannot avoid because you realize that you are the child of that memory that you want to modify afterwards., which is impossible. For me memory is central. There are two or three scenes where the couple has conversations talking about memory., talking about, as Vargas Llosa would say, when did Zavalita get screwed? When did our partner get fucked? If one could realize when things are screwed up... But one does not realize and, in retrospect, memory magnifies them, modifies them. One believes that one can mold it, but not. They are useless efforts.
You told me before that there is no vindication of sexuality in the film. But I think it is very explicit in showing the physical body. I think there is a claim there.. In contrast to the youth culture that dominates society, I think the movie makes a statement., slams the table on this particular issue.
Yeah, One of the first ideas that came to me when I started writing it was that I looked in the mirror and said, “this is not me”. When did I change? When did I stop being that face with which I want to be remembered?? That face with which I identify. Do you know those pantheons where they put a photo? What is the photo that I want to be my emblem on the grave? At thirty-two years old or now? So, see me and see that, yet, with the decay of the body, I'm still me, and I am still me because of my sexual impulses, and that I need to prove to myself that I can generate desire, it is important. For example, I imagine that when she arrives at the hotel, to the man of the hotel, plain and simple, He can't stop because he doesn't like the woman.. Y, however, what he likes is the offer. And she knows how to provoke in him the need to be a goat. It's those little twists that I like to put. And if, of course, I was very interested in talking about the decay of the body., basically the feminine one, which is the one seen the most in the film, and how, despite the tyranny of bodies, sexuality crosses other territories. Sexuality crosses through humidity. There was one element that I specifically marked and that is that she gets wet., the fact that she gets wet because that is true sexuality.
You talked at the beginning about the difference between your cinema and contemporary cinema. In this regard, There is one thing that has come to me from your film and that I find is beginning to be missing., even, in a certain auteur cinema. And in this film there is great compassion for the characters. Even in the case of man, who in many ways can be your most pathetic character, there is compassion and understanding. I perceive that the majority of today's cinema wants to draw too much line between good and bad., that and beyond. What do you think about this issue?? Was that your intention in the film??
Yeah, I was going there. I think the world we live in is dominated by political correctness, which is an aberrant moralism, that will end up closing our mouths all. I'm very interested in moving away from that line of thinking., of morality. In practically all my films, morality is the central enemy. And since morality is my central enemy, I have no choice but to be compassionate to all my characters.. Even with the little maid who, when I wrote the moment in which he takes sides, think, “at this moment the feminists leave the room”, (laughter) because the famous female solidarity is falling to the ground. Because the other possible ending is for both women to come together and, once they render the old man useless, set up a shelter for battered women and a factory where they make dresses for children in Africa, while they sing, like at the end of Bertolucci's film. But I was terrified of letting today's customs and morals, that is different, but it is just as strong as in the 16th century, They will dominate my plot and my characters.
I thought a lot about Cervantes, also in García Márquez, in his way of approaching life. Personally, what is increasingly missed in the cinema. I don't know what references resonated with you while you were writing..
Yo, more than talking about references, I would tell you that I really like the stories of the bulls.. Practically, In all the films I have written, people are confined because the confinement allows me to clarify more about that destiny that dominates them and moves them like puppets.. The confinement helps me to highlight the brushstrokes. It's like light in Rubens, in which two or three points illuminate the rest of the room. The running of the bulls is one of those points of light that allows me to highlight what interests me a lot., What is the humanity of the characters?. There is a moment that I like, which is when they take the old woman and are taking care of her and the husband tells the maid, “Lower her skirt.”. She is badly injured. It is a body and, however, remains the object of his jealousy. She is still his wife. And there is also humor. Humor comes out in my films in one way or another. Even in the most terrible moments.
Despite the atmosphere of decrepitude that surrounds the characters, the film exudes great vitality. To what extent was it your intention to transmit that vitality?
My characters are alive. They are old, defeated, but they are alive. They both live, feel, they have illusions, fans, petty, but they have them. And what I liked about this story is that old saying “I hope life doesn't fulfill your wishes.”. He managed to cancel the jealousy by locking her up., isolating her from the world, turning her into a music box doll that won't be able to do anything. The gate, but, at the same time, the reason for your life is removed, what is jealousy. And she will live from the construction in her head of the memories of the one who was: the object of desire. Then she goes to ask him to read her the long account of the insults she, rigorously, like a scribe, was saving and, even, correcting in the editorial. It is the story of a dystopia. They accomplished what they wanted.. At what cost? Bueno, that's the other question.
A very human dystopia.
Yeah, but it's not orwellian. They are your grandparents stuck in a house. You like to imagine that, when you go to see them at family dinner, they live as you see them, calm, serene, happy, and not that they can tear their hair out over the television remote control, which is what happens in many couples. GERARDO LEON
