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Interview
3 May 2015 2.00 h

'Life beats fiction'

Isaki Lacuesta Every Wednesday at 6.30pm on El Punt Avui TV, Marcela interviews prominent English speaking residents in Catalonia or relevant Catalan figures. Here is her recent interview with Isaki Lacuesta.
Your most re­cent, and sev­enth film, Murieron por encima de sus posi­bil­i­dades (Dying Be­yond Their Means) was just re­leased in cin­e­mas on April 24. It's a good title.
It was not easy to trans­late it into Eng­lish. It comes from an ex­pres­sion that Span­ish politi­cians have used a lot to ex­plain the cri­sis, try­ing to make us feel guilty and make us be­lieve we have been liv­ing be­yond our means; and I was won­der­ing when that hap­pened, be­cause my gen­er­a­tion doesn't have any flats or cars, or any­thing.
So, tell me about the story.
The film is a black com­edy which tells the story of five nor­mal cit­i­zens, as nor­mal as Span­ish cit­i­zens can be, five men who es­cape from a men­tal asy­lum. They want to turn the world back to the way it was be­fore the cri­sis started and so they come up with a plan to change the sit­u­a­tion. Their idea is to kid­nap the pres­i­dent of the Cen­tral Bank, tor­ture him and force him to bring things to back to nor­mal. They want to make the world as it was five years be­fore, when the cri­sis started, they want to some kind of a reset.
You've got such as star -stud­ded cast: José Coro­n­ado, Josep Ma Pou, Ari­adna Gil, Al­bert Pla, Sergi Lopez, Àngela Molina...how did you con­vince them to take part in the film?
Also Emma Suárez, Luis Tosar, José Sac­ristan, who is a leg­end for me, Car­men Machi, etc. We were re­ally lucky to get them and I know I was right to choose them.
You cre­ated a co­op­er­a­tive, and the cast and staff will only get paid from what the film earns after re­lease.
Yes, that will de­pend a lot on the au­di­ence. That was the idea, to pro­duce the film our­selves, to make a film with­out wait­ing for the gen­eral man­agers of TV chan­nels, or for pub­lic funds. We were shoot­ing while we were look­ing for fi­nanc­ing and that was long, we've been shoot­ing for two years and a half, with in­ter­rup­tions.
Is that quite un­usual for a pro­duc­tion?
It is nor­mal to spend quite long, but we were shoot­ing for three days, then we edited, then looked for more money, then shot an­other week and so on. It was good be­cause it al­lowed us to get a great cast and also to write the script in the process. At the be­gin­ning we had the idea of tor­tur­ing a banker but it was not enough, and in the end the po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion cases started and we put some of that in the film as well; we just worked with the cur­rent events. I like to think that the film is like a news­pa­per, a com­i­cal one. If you take any Span­ish news­pa­per, what they re­port is so crazy; as they say, life beats fic­tion.
This is not the only pro­ject you have in hand; you are also prepar­ing the re­lease of La Pr­opera pell (The Next Skin), a drama, very dif­fer­ent from Murieron...
Yes in­deed. Truf­faut once said that a film­maker should make films against his pre­vi­ous ones and it's true in my case.
Such a change must be quite dif­fi­cult though.
Not for me, be­cause all my pro­jects have been dif­fer­ent from the ones I had done be­fore. If I had to do an­other film like Los pas­sos dobles it would be im­pos­si­ble for me today. I find it eas­ier to look for­ward for new dif­fer­ent ways, and it's also far more ex­cit­ing. Ac­tu­ally, the most ex­cit­ing way of mak­ing movies, and in life in gen­eral, is to make new things be­cause you don't know how to do it; you need to learn it. I like to make things I don't know how to do.
You work with Sergi López and Emma Suarez from Muri­erion.
As well as Àlex Moner, and I was happy to work with Bruno Tedeschino, who is a fétiche actor of Patrice Chéreau's, whom I've ad­mired for a very long time. He has also worked with Michael Haneke and so on. For me he is a real star.
What is the film about?
It is an emo­tional drama and thriller about a boy who had dis­ap­peared in the moun­tains, in a small vil­lage on the bor­der be­tween Cat­alo­nia and France. One day, 10 years after, the mother (Emma Suárez)re­ceives a call telling her they found a boy in a mi­nors' cen­tre in France who could be her son. In France it is not nec­es­sary to have DNA test and the mother recog­nises the boy. The plot re­volves around the life in this lit­tle vil­lage.
When is it ex­pected to open?
We have fin­ished the edit­ing, and are work­ing on post pro­duc­tion sound at the mo­ment. We'll prob­a­bly be fin­ish­ing post pro­duc­tion in spring and we'll re­lease the film in cin­e­mas in au­tumn-win­ter, to make it co­in­cide with the snow be­cause it is a win­tery cold, cli­matic film, with lots of snow.
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