Isaías is a man who is around forty and is an architect by profession.. a few years before, when I was a little younger, luck seemed on his side. So, He enjoyed the awards and recognition of his guild. But, as one of his mentors warned him, success is something ephemeral. However, Isaiah has not yet realized this or does not want to recognize it.. Now, The projects seem to avoid him and he doesn't understand why.. The lack of professional activity has confined him to caring for his children and household matters., and his relationship with his partner does not seem to be at its best either.. In this context, Isaías meets Sonia, another of the mothers from the school where she takes her children. And the idea of a new relationship opens.
This is the argument of A not so simple life, latest production by Navarrese director Félix Viscarret in which, for the first time, tackles a script with his own material, without the basis of the work of other writers such as Fernando Aramburu (under the stars, Patria), Leonardo Padura (winds of havana) or Juan José Millás (Don't look in the eyes).
A not so simple life It opens this Friday 23 June in commercial rooms. G.LEON
I don't know if this seems irrelevant to you., but I wanted to ask you about the movie poster. It reminded me of an image from the reissue of At the end of the getaway, by Godard.
Ah, What fun. What you say is not the original poster; you know, ¿no?
Yeah, Yeah.
But if, it's true. Bueno, as you have seen, the film has something of a timeless urban fable. A not so simple life takes up a type of generational comedies or dramatic comedies that have inspired me. So, Yes, we were looking for a poster that had that element of indie comedy and, in that sense, It's true that the designer told me that that reissue of At the end of the getaway I had played with those tones, but in that case with Jean Seberg and Jean Paul Belmondo in black and white, full body... It's not exactly that, but it is true that it takes up a more classic type of graphics or graphic design??, timeless? It's not like that's the word either., but it refers to a type of dramatic comedy or independent comedy, let's say, long haul.
The movie surprised me, above all, regarding certain formal approaches. Reminds me more of French cinema, in general, I was also thinking about the cinema of Belgian Joachim Lafosse. In that sense, How did you plan the staging??
The staging always has to attend to the flame or the original diamond of the story. From there everything branches. In that sense, all creative decisions, if they are coherent, they go in that same direction. For me, the bet on stage had to reflect the essence of the film. First it had to have a naturalistic part so that we all felt identified with the characters. That was one of the things we were looking for., that all the spectators could think, “that's my life”, or “I've been there”, that there was a process of empathy or identification. But we were also looking for a soft or delicate stylization, that everything also had a kind of aura of autumn comedy that takes place in a city that is sometimes anonymous, nocturnal, almost magical, a meeting place, of sleepless nights, of calls. The staging had to unify these two sides or those two levels of reading the film..
Among many other aspects, The film presents a confrontation between the desperate search for success and its other side., the failure. Why do we live like this, in that permanent dichotomy?
I would tell you that the human mind has helped us survive as a species for thousands of years., but it is also a tool that can become an important source of anguish, of overwhelm or stress. Indeed, in A not so simple life I tell the story of that moment in which we are in that kind of whirlwind where we have the feeling that we are failing as parents, where is the rice going to us professionally?, where we will no longer have time to realize the dreams we had when we were young. All of this can be made into a hodgepodge, as is the case of the protagonist, and it seems like we are going through life with our tongues hanging out. But, me, All of this allowed me to show the idea that human beings are sometimes a little ridiculous.. I say it with love, with tenderness. And also reflect on our human condition, about that kind of vanity, of ego, that desire to sell that we enjoy unstoppable success, when, probably, it's not like that. as i say, They are mechanisms of our mind that I find fun to observe how they work in times of transition..
The latest Spanish cinema takes the figure of the family and, generally, subjects it to a process of destructuring. However, I get the impression that your film subjects her to the opposite., almost to a reconstruction process, what I find interesting or different.
What parenting or parenting relationships are have always interested me., be it in the case of a family, let's say, standard, or in a reformulation. If you think about it, in a way, my first movie, under the stars, had some formulation of a family created in an unorthodox way. And here is also some reflection on all this. At a certain time, many times you look at your partner and say, At what point did we decide to have children?? It's as if, suddenly, someone has cut a piece of your life and, suddenly, there they are. When have we decided this voluntarily? So, indeed, The film shows us someone who questions what his role as a father is., as a professional, as a friend. Y, as it usually is in the movies, The dramatic arc is going to be that adaptation process to find your true place in life.
There is a phrase from the movie that seems very significant to me that says: “all movies are about love or heartbreak”.
(laughter)
I don't know if this is a dogma for you, but, after watching the movie, I don't know exactly if it's about love or lack of love...
Ah, how beautiful. No, I think this movie is about love (laughter). That of lack of love, you're right, You are right... There is one thing that I am very interested in portraying in cinema., as narrator and as spectator, and it is that fine line between comedy and a reflection, if you like, more melancholic or nostalgic about what life is and how sometimes it slips out of our hands. Time escapes us, life escapes us. But, even so, thanks to comedy, We discover that the fight for our lives is worth it. this movie, Is it love or heartbreak?? I believe there is love, although there is also a part in which there is also a little loss. The characters will realize that certain phases of life, certain past eras, they are already behind. So, there is a part of nostalgia, of melancholy, of that something, when you enter a new life phase, where you also say goodbye to the previous. So, Yeah, there is love and there is heartbreak.
While I was watching the film I reflected on that loneliness that dominates contemporary life.. like your characters, It seems that we are accompanied, but, at the same time, we are alone. Is it so?
Yeah, It's true. The film talks a lot about nerves, obsessions and concerns of the character of Isaiah, played by Miki Esparbé. But he also talks a lot about his relationship with his young children., of the relationship with your partner, of the friendship relationship with Nico, your partner, played by Álex García, talks about a budding chemistry or connection with another mother from the same school and the same park, which is the character of Ana Polvorosa… With which, Yeah, It's true. There are many parts of our neuroses and our obsessions, but there is also a lot about how human beings try to connect with other human beings..
Do the children, in the end, they put us in our place in the world?
Fully. When you enter a new life phase, Your ego and your vanity can suffer if you see that you are no longer going to be such a protagonist or, as you say, You can realize that now your place in the world is to be the secondary character in this movie and the protagonists are now those creatures that you have brought into the world and who have their whole life ahead of them.. Y, indeed, if you let go of your vanity and your resentful ego and learn the importance and value of that new phase, You will see how nice it is to be the secondary character in this movie in which such wonderful beings are the protagonists.. You have to let go of the ego to be able to see it well.
Since you were talking to me about the distribution, I wanted to ask you how you achieved that naturalness in acting., How was working with the actors to achieve that tone?.
I think I work a lot from empathy. With the actor or actress, I try to connect so that we both empathize as human beings, both understanding the same character, that is to say, understanding the character among ourselves as if we were that character. That character has to live in us, we have to understand it and love it. As I usually say: if you don't want your own characters, how do you expect the viewer to fall in love with them? In the case of A not so simple life We wanted the comedy to be very gripping, that is to say, we weren't looking for a gag, we were not trying to emphasize anything, humor had to make the viewer smile, but not because we laughed at the character, but because we smiled and felt that we have also been in that situation in life. A comedy in which you laugh with the characters is not the same., like looking down on them, than a comedy in which you smile when you say: “It's true, I've been there too”.
This is your first solo script based on an original idea of yours.. What part is there of you in this story? What part is construction?
When I write there are two things I like to play with. One is to create characters that are born from our own weaknesses as human beings.. I think it was Mies van der Rohe who said: “God, the details are”. In that sense, that observing our concerns, our vanities, If we take it to a concrete example that has happened to us in life, It will be much more powerful and it will be much easier to cause us to identify with that event.. Whether it is autobiographical or not? Bueno, when your daughter is younger, One day you make her pee in the middle of a park in a position that was painful for your back.. It's an uncomfortable situation, it's ridiculous, your daughter is so small that, accidentally, you end up pissing in your shoe. So you say, How fun is this if we know how to see it from a distance?. If this is already seeming ridiculous to me, It would be very fun to imagine that, in those moments in life when we believe that our public image is so important, what we understand by a rival or a professional competitor appears. These are the cases in which one's ego wants to always appear to be great., be better than the other. So, Yeah, indeed, The film arises from something semi-autobiographical to reflect on our human condition. Something that, If I push it one step further, a subtle comedy or comic situation will arise.
To finish, I wanted to tell you that it was pleasant to me, even a little degreaser, in front of so many films of people who are going to live in the countryside, claim the city space.
(laughter) Yeah, indeed. In A not so simple life For me there is something of a song or poem about the city as a meeting place, place where our lives intersect, place that, at night, when it is empty, acquires almost a magical mantle, in our efforts, when we look out a window because we can't sleep, when we call someone in the middle of the night, as Miki Esparbé's character calls Ana Polvorosa's character. Indeed, the city can have something suggestive, infinite, evocative, with images that can deal almost with the abstract or the magical. In this sense, I thought it was very nice that the protagonists were architects who, in the background, They are responsible for shaping the city, to give that shape, as we said, almost magical that these places have where our lives take place.
