One day, Luisa (performed by Alexandra Jiménez), daughter of a retired architect (Karra Elejalde), He discovers that his father welcomes a Bulgarian immigrant into his home (Ivan Barnev). This situation, strange for both (He would never have imagined that his father, a sullen and lonely man, I could do something like that) will awaken her curiosity and take her on a path of mutual knowledge. This is the plot premise of Basil, the beautiful cinematographic debut of the Valencian Avelina Prat that this 4 November opens in commercial theaters. We were chatting with her about this production.
What is the origin of this story?
It's something that happened to my father a few years ago.. I ate with my father once a week. My father called me one day to tell me that we couldn't meet for lunch because he had a circumstance., And I had a Bulgarian at home and I had to give him a hand with I don't know what.. I was very surprised. A friend of hers knew a Bulgarian who was sleeping on the street and had asked her to put him up for a couple of days in her house and my father had said yes.. And there was the man. The following week, I see my father again and he tells me that the Bulgarian is still at home, I was looking for work, but he was going to leave soon, and that they had met him at the bridge club. For me all that was very strange and, at once, fascinating. Time passed and that man did not leave. He was always about to leave, but he never left and it continued. I lived this story through my father's words. From there, I imagined this character and wrote the story according to how I saw him, without ever getting to know him, That's why the film has this air of a fable..
What was the writing process like?, from that original knot, of the final script?
I found the idea of a guy sleeping on the street very curious., but he is a bridge and chess champion, and that he is looking for a life in a bridge club with older ladies (because mostly older ladies play bridge), that they paid him a little to play with him and, So, rise in the ranking [of the competition]. The other thing that fascinated me was learning about this story through others.. I had lived all this as a fiction, so i thought, I'm going to write this story, and little by little I worked on the script. And since it is a fairly long process, There came a time when there were things in the script where I no longer knew if I had made them up or if my father had told me them..
In a context of Spanish cinema where a series of stories that address major social issues seem to prevail, You present a film that tells us the story of characters who, simply, they try to get to know each other better. What was your approach in this regard?? Is there something in you conscious or determined to tell these types of stories??
I imagine that, when you start writing, It's not a deliberate decision., but then you realize that there is something like that. I don't want to transcend or tell a story that encompasses big issues.. What I can do, What suits me and what interests me is dealing with small topics., but that give off something deeper or deeper. I really like simple stories in which you are with the characters, what, as plot itself, They do not raise such a hot topic, but then they do connect with it and they do talk about things. They talk about relationships with others, how to connect, of that distance that we always leave with others. I like, above all, tell stories. This movie is a lot about that.. They told me the story, I have transformed it into a film and, inside the movie, stories are told, also. They are all tiny, but they all have something.
Your film tells the relationship of a father and a daughter who find themselves bridging a distance between them that even they themselves seem to be unaware of.. There is always this cliché that a writer or screenwriter, when you write a story, He puts something of himself in all his characters. Is there something of you in this story or in the characters?
Yeah, there are a lot. In any story I write I realize that, in the end, I deal with the same topics and, although they have different lives, I get similar characters. Your way of looking at the world is quite similar to mine., I can't help it. For example, I do feel very present the distance I have with everyone. My way of getting closer or making up for that distance is with kindness., with sympathy, trying to smile (laughter) I have realized that all my characters are very lonely and that they always try to take a step. Or not give it, but there is always something of that. There is another personal aspect that appears in the characters., in the film and in the shorts that I have made, What is estrangement from how the world works?. The estrangement of what surrounds us and not knowing very well where to place yourself and how to behave, being in a permanent search for how to do.
There is one thing that has caught my attention in the story is that the other, I miss him, the anomalous can help resolve what remains pending between people, be the support point or the link between us. To what extent were you interested in the viewer confronting this question??
Yeah, it is as is. Father and daughter have a very distant relationship because of how they are.. It is a relationship of exaggerated respect for the life of the other., not to get involved in anything they do; They have settled into that routine and that way of functioning.. And through that coexistence with this new element, The father realizes that the relationship with the daughter should get a little closer, that need a little more connection. and she, in turn, equal. She discovers things in her father that have to do with how she treats this character., the act of putting someone in your house, something that was unthinkable for her. All of this makes her discover things about her father that she didn't know and makes her get a little closer..
I was also referring to the issue of immigration. In your film it is not a central element, cannot be said to be, as we mentioned before, that great topic that addresses, but, somehow, It seems like an invitation to the viewer to get closer to the strange., so that, of that relationship, something will also emerge from what you are going to learn.
Yeah, the film is very much told from the point of view of those here. Everything revolves around Vasil, the protagonist, but we are telling each other's story. In fact, The only point of view we don't have is his. (laughter). We do not look at the immigrant from a distant point of view, social, as we are used to, but he gets into the house and then he transforms into a person. He is no longer an “X” immigrant. Suddenly, this immigrant bursts into your daily life and changes things. It could be from Murcia and the father would experience it the same!! (laughter) But if, perspective changes. I did not want to deal with the issue of immigration as we usually see it., but from this other angle.
Another interesting topic refers to how little we often know about those people who are not ours., curiously, closest. In this case, is the father. We think we know everything about our father, For example, and suddenly, we discover a whole world. I don't know if it was a question that seduced you and how you wanted to approach it..
Yeah, I think about it many times. I look at the people around me, even from family or very close people and, in many aspects, They are very unknown. This is again related to the issue of distance.. Suddenly, discovering something unexpected from someone very close surprises and, at once, you realize that, that we really are strangers. You don't have to be a Bulgarian, There are many things about my own father that I had no idea about..
And in what way did the story itself resolve that question for you??
Actually, I don't think it solves anything, but it does confirm something that was floating around and that you realize in greater depth.. but solve, resolver, well no (laughter) You know what is there and the first step is to realize things.
Another element is the role of the family in society.. Despite everything that is said against her, still there, at the core of our relationships, How do you perceive it?
I think that, somehow, still there. What happens is that it does it in a more open way. in this movie, For example, It is said that the brother lives in Madrid, and it never appears, just in a phone call. We understand that the mother is divorced from the father and does not appear either. It's a family that's a bit broken up., but whose members are still in contact and there is an important connection in their lives. In most of the families that I am close to, that is a bit of the scheme., but any type of scheme is valid.
I wanted to ask you about humor.. I think that Basil It is a very funny film and I wanted you to tell us what role humor plays in your work.
I love that there is always a little humor!! It's not a laughing mood, but they are small strange situations that make you smile, that help explain the characters and that estrangement that we were talking about and that, with humor, they are told very well. in this movie, specifically, There were already several situations of this type in the script., but, above all, count on Ivan Barnev, the bulgarian actor, it made the character accentuate that side more. All you have to do is see it. He has that innate friendliness and that way of acting and saying things that further supported this aspect of the film..
Basil It's clearly a character movie., and what I really like is its three-dimensionality. In that sense, I wanted to ask you what the relationship was between the script and working with the actors.. They are very own characters, that go beyond the cliché and, while watching the movie, It gave me the impression that the actors have contributed a lot to what was in the text...
That was my biggest quest when writing the script., that they were unique characters, credible and not stereotyped. I worked hard on it and I'm very happy that you see it.. It is true that the actors contribute a lot. It happened to me with everyone. The first thing was to talk to them a lot., that they understood the character well. Once they understood, they were already alone. It was about clarifying things during filming. I remember having coffee with Susi [Sánchez] during the preparation of the film. We talk a lot about the character she plays and, when it was already very clear, told me: Avelina, I have caught it. Now I'm going home, I do my job and come to the shoot. and I told him: very good (laughter).
And in that nuance, Is there a direct relationship between the text you wrote and the characters they ultimately built?, or is there a mutual influence between them, you and vice versa?
Both things have a lot of weight.. The script already explains what the character has to be like., but the actor contributes a lot. Kara [Elejalde], For example, It gave him a tenderness that you can't write as is.. You can write the situations, but the looks he makes and how he behaves give it a much greater dimension. His character grew, above all, when he faced the Bulgarian. Suddenly, The treatment between them made Karra himself contribute more things to his character, which was very nice to see. It also happened when he was with his daughter., with Alexandra Jiménez.
You are very happy with the distribution…
I am very happy. I always say it: casting is more important than directing actors (laughter). If you get the actor right, the rest...
There is a difficulty that I think is very well resolved and that is how the film plots the different conflicts of each character.. I think that Basil It's not a plot movie, where situations are resolved by a causal issue, but there are a series of small pieces that come together. What was the biggest challenge when it came to interweaving all those elements??
Well then, in the end, everything had a consistency and a story that could be read as such and not just as a series of situations, one after the other, and a character description. What, in the end, Yes, it will spin a small plot and you will be left with the feeling that something has happened. (laughter). That was the hardest, It's true.
When did you realize that everything was already well connected??
The key was given to me by the final sequence between the father and the daughter.. What, beyond the adventures of the bulgarian, That progression in the relationship between father and daughter was what gave unity to the film.
The film has a certain literary tone. I don't know where it is or how you get it, or if you deliberately planned it and projected it onto the film, but it feels like there is no omniscient narrator, hidden, which is usual, but there is someone very present who is telling you, viewer, what happens, a story.
Yeah, there's a lot of that. At first it was involuntary, but then I realize that I am writing that way, I understand myself very well with that way. It has a lot to do with what we were saying about telling stories.. More than portraying a reality, what we are doing is telling a story, like when our parents tell it to us when we are little (laughter) Yeah, It has a literary part. In fact, There are several moments in the film in which this is reinforced.. For example, when the Bulgarian tells stories, or when, in the end, in the letter he writes to his daughter, We finally hear him speak in his own language and it happens that we have to read the subtitles to find out the content. There is a voluntary literary component that closes all this a bit.. Yeah, Yeah, I like the literary (laughter)
Did you have someone special in mind?? I was thinking about the stories of Alice Munro, those kinds of small stories...
Yeah, It's true. I didn't have anyone in particular in mind., but literature of that type suits me a lot. They are those stories in which it seems that nothing happens, but they settle you into a certain state of mind.
It's your first movie. In cinema we always talk about this fight between the director and the production conditions. In that long process of making the film, Do you feel like you have had to give up something important or, now that it's over, it doesn't matter much anymore?
Mira, I arrived with a great advantage when it came to making the first film, and it is that, having worked on about forty films as a script, I was very clear about what a shoot is, what can be done and what cannot be done. And if I know how much time I have to shoot (In this case it was five weeks), I already know the things I can tell and how to do it. That was a great relief to me.. Think: at least I know that (laughter) There are always resignations, but one already has them. What I am very happy about is that the final result maintains a lot of the initial spirit of when I started writing the story., which is the most complicated. Getting that spirit to be maintained after all the steps that have to be taken... I see the film now and I say: Yeah, It's more or less what I wanted to tell. That is to say, in the end, there are resignations, but acceptable.
I wanted to ask you about the staging.. It reminded me of Hong Sang-soo's cinema. What references did you have??
Man, the references are inevitable, but you don't think: “I'm going to do like so-and-so”. I feel much closer to a calmer type of cinema, with a more classic way of rolling or, simply, more serene, that keeps the plane longer, that lets the actors develop things, in which there are many wide and medium shots, but there is no nervous camera that follows the characters at two centimeters. I thought that would work better for this story and I went for it.. Actually, It's what I feel most comfortable with..
and the last. When watching your movie, Many of us have felt that it is the first time that the city of Valencia has been filmed in a truly cinematic way (laughter)
(laughter) Yeah?
…Yeah, far from a certain folklorism, on one side or the other. How did you approach that scenario??
Well, on the one hand, I wanted to portray a medium-large city, but it doesn't necessarily make it clear that it is Valencia. I didn't want a specific geographical location. It could be a provincial city anywhere. And then, on the other hand, about the portrait that is made of the city, of course I run away from folklorisms, but what defines the city are the characters and where they move. If I leave Alfredo's house, the father character, or the bridge widow's house, I pass through a couple of streets that are more elegant. At the moment when I go to the character who is looking for a job, I'm in more popular places like Ruzafa or Carmen. Or when he is idle and has to let time pass or doesn't know where to go, we go to the river, which is a place that is not usually portrayed. But it is that, If I myself had two hours and nowhere to go, I'll probably go there (laughter) In the end, a varied portrait of the city is composed, but it is not typical of Valencia.
