《不良教育》后的Fele惊喜不断。

 

新片Bolboreta, mariposa, papallona将于2007年上映，讲述发生在渔港小镇的故事。

Fele接受问答。
(翻译的很不好很不好不可以嘲笑我，其间因为死机还全丢一次……我哭啊....)

 

Angelo - 13:05
你好，Fele。你是一个非常富有多样性的演员，我有幸去María Guerrero剧院看了你的"Flor de otoño"，你一人饰演多人的表演使我着迷，证实了你的能力，让导演相信你的多样性？谢谢。

回答：我相信是这样，不然也没可能在这里回答一个这样的问题。(Fele的这个逻辑很有意思;)

 

Núria - 13:06
蝴蝶对你来说意味着什么？

 

回答：对我来说意味着好消息。(不知道这是Fele的私人问题还是关于电影;)

 

pedro gutierrez - 13:09
你是不是要对我们说些什么以确保我们不会错过这部电影？与那些并不是真正的演员而是本地镇民的演员合作是怎样的？在这个专业演员的时代？

 

回答：演员Tzeitel Rodríguez, David Bendito还有我自己，与那些拥有一套自己的压倒性的人生哲学的人合作是一段非常迷人的经历。

观看一部电影就像立刻以全景镜头打开了一扇窗，如果一个人想要逃开世俗的噪音，那么最好的选择就是来看这部电影。这里面有3份的谨慎：我的，导演的和童年的(= =！不懂)。从这里面可以感受到自己的人生和电影本身。

 

molinillo - 13:10

你还在于Noriega保持联系吗？仍然认为在<死亡论文>中扮演相貌平庸那一个比扮演得到女主角的那个更加幸运许多吗？

 

回答：是的，我当然与他保持着联系，我们是朋友。在<死亡论文>中扮演相貌平庸的那一个给我带来了幸运，并且更加值得尊敬的是，在人生中扮演相貌平庸的那一个。

(我太佩服Fele的这一个人生哲学了，这也解释了他为什么一直都是如此低调。在<死亡论文>中，Fele扮演了相貌平庸的那一个，而Noriega扮演赢得女主角的大帅帅，在后来的<睁开你的双眼>中也是如此，<死亡论文>之前，Fele与Noriega即是现实中的好友，在<死亡论文>为他们俩定型之前，其实Fele与Noriega都是自己选择的，Fele选择了Chema，相貌平庸但是角色本身更加具有挑战性也是实际上的主角，而不假的是<死亡论文>中平庸的Chema确实为他带来了好运，因为Goya的最佳新人奖在Chema与Nori扮演的漂亮的那一个之间好像并没什么选择的悬念;)

 

Franmol - 13:11

下午好，Fele。回归与阿尔莫多瓦的合作？

 

回答：下午好，是的。

 

Angelo - 13:12

你好，Fele。<死亡论文>中Chema这个角色不能被写得更加好了，你棒的演绎了他，但是有很多事实已经写在纸上了(意思大概是说剧本的功劳已经很大了)，请简短的介绍一下这个电影怎么被处理圆滑？谢谢。

 

回答：做了足够的准备，尝试构建这个人物，足够的"Acojonadillo"(这个词不认得,希望有高人可以顺便指点了)，那是第一次把我放在一个摄影机前，没有时间圆润了。

 

Lara - 13:13

我几乎看了你的每一部电影，你的每一个角色都有很大不同，这每一部电影中有一些Fele Martínez的东西吗？

 

回答：这所有的影片中总是有一些我的东西，因为我是那个给与他们生命的人。

(这个回答感动死我了……)

 

Jesus - 13:13

一部电影需要导演的什么品质？拥抱你。

 

回答：许多许多责任心。

 

David - 13:15

是什么原因阻止人们去观看西班牙语电影？我不认为我们的电影是卖座的。顺便问候你。

 

回答：我相信这里面有一些原因，我们有一些失败的地方，我们的电影从业人员，我们的制片人，我们的发行人员，我们的观众，我们的记者……

要做的是我们每个人都做好自己的工作，观众方面的偏见认识影响非常大，而作为专业人员的我们将继续不断的努力工作。

 

天~~就先到这里吧~~好可怕的翻译~~颠三倒四的~~真是丢人~~有时间了我一定努力学习~~嗯！~~

共有44条问答~~照我这速度~~一下子做不完了~~先放出10条供大家欣赏~~这些回答真的感觉很好~~Fele说得好多话我都又佩服又感动的~~希望大家喜欢;)~~

 

 

 

 

Fele Martinez

Interview.    Nov,2004

    "I'VE BEEN DOING THE CLOWN MY WHOLE LIFE. Growing up in Spain, my friends always said: 'Fele. We want to laugh!' So that's what I made them do. I loved theater, particularly the experimental kind, and I joined with three friends and we started our own crazy group called 'Sexpeare.' Since you couldn't learn drama in college in my hometown, I moved to Madrid when I was nineteen. I was scared to be in this big city by myself, but I was also excited because I knew that I could now play by my own rules. I was shy when I first attended the Royal School of Dramatic Art and then when I auditioned for a movie about some college students involved with a snuff film, I almost had a panic attack. I tried to get rid of my theatrical diction and I dressed like a heavy-metal rocker and somehow I got the part. I remember the moment so well. I was eating at a restaurant with my family and I got a call. When I came back to the table with my head hanging down, my parents knew that I hadn't gotten the part. But then I screamed 'I'm going to make a movie!' and that was such a great moment for me. Since then, I have made nineteen movies in ten years. I like everything about acting. I love playing different kinds of people, and I even like the exhibitionistic part of it, where you show yourself off to other people. But I don't like so much the sex scenes. I was terribly scared to do my first sex scene in a film called Black Tears. I was performing with the Spanish actress Ariadna Gil who is so pretty, and I apologized to her before we started that I can't control a few parts of my body, and if something happens, I am so sorry. She sat me down and told me we are both human beings, and that she has her husband and I had my girlfriend, and that this was going to be okay. So we got totally naked and got close to each other. But then I realized sex scenes are almost orthopedic, and that you have to turn your arm and leg in just the right position for the camera. Now I am in Almodovar's Bad Education, and in one scene I have sex with Gael Garcia (star of Y Tu Mama Tambien.) As I grabbed him by the hair and we started going at it, I found I was hurting him. It's tough getting your mind and your body together in these scenes. For my next movie I hope to make a comedy. I've still got that shy person inside of me, and I just want to cut up and go crazy in a surreal comedy."

Articles

Fele & the Bad Education

Almodovar's Other Bad Boy He won a Goya award for Best New Actor and has since starred in two dozen films. Meet Fele Martinez, the other half of Bad Education, new this week on DVD. Tuesday, April 12, 2005 By Pam Grady

Even though he was a star of Bad Education, one of the highest profile movies at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, Fele Martinez could mingle in the bar at that city's Hotel Intercontinental and rate nary a second glance. The 30-year-old actor is a bundle of nervous energy and he looks years younger with his hair cropped short and large, liquid puppy-dog eyes. With his co-star Gael Garcia Bernal -- who enjoys three showy roles in the film, including that of a cross-dressing femme fatale – continuing to get the bulk of journalists' attention, the slender Martinez is definitely the thinner half of the Bad Education equation. But Pedro Almodovar’s latest masterpiece, which is new today on DVD, belongs to him as much as his flamboyant co-star. Indeed, it is Martinez as film director Enrique who pulls us along into the heart of Bad Education's mystery. Always a critical favorite, Almodovar has enjoyed some of the best notices of his storied career for Bad Education, a noir romp that jumps back through time as Enrique seeks to unlock a puzzle that leads back to his Catholic childhood. The movie received seven European Film nominations and an Independent Spirit Award nod for Best Foreign Film.   Jeff Vespa/Wireimage.com Photo Almodovar at Toronto fest Though Spain declined to name the film as its Oscar representative in the Best Foreign Language Film category (an honor given to the eventual ’04 winner, Alejandro Amenabar's The Sea Inside), it is as worthy of plaudits as Talk to Her, which garnered Almodovar a Best Original Screenplay award and Best Director nomination a couple of years back. Talk to Her was also the film that launched Martinez’s association with his country’s most celebrated cinematic auteur, in the form of the small part of Alfredo. The actor, who insists that his aim is to work with only the best of directors, has been a bit spoiled perhaps by his early association with Amenabar, with whom he made two of his first three movies, Thesis and Open Your Eyes. It was for his role in the former as a student obsessed with gore that Martinez won a Goya Award for Best New Actor. Martinez has made two dozen films in less than a decade, having even found time recently to also appear in the critically lambasted ghost story Darkness. And even though it is the clarion call of a screenplay to be directed by Almodovar or Amenabar that still most excites him as an actor, he almost said no this time around to Pedro.   Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com Photo Co-star Gael Garcia Bernal "I was on the verge of saying, 'This is impossible for me, I can't do it,'" recalls Martinez, during an interview with FilmStew last fall. “When I finished reading the script, I was so surprised. I thought, 'Oh my God, this is a lot of work.' This is a movie that forces you to think.’" “The relationships are so extremely, extremely hot and feelings are on the edge,” he continues. “My relationship with Angel [Bernal] is so hard, because they are both always hiding things from the other and both try to discover what the other is hiding, Angel's ambition and the nervous curiosity of Enrique." Taking the part, Martinez realized, meant putting his own acting philosophy to the test. He laughs as he explains, "I don't like to make art that would be easy for me. I want to learn as much as possible and I like it when the character has a lot of difficulties. I like the challenge of overcoming those obstacles." Much has been made of the challenges that co-star Bernal faced in signing on to Bad Education. The Mexican actor had to learn to speak with a Spanish accent; both gain and lose weight, according to the demands of his three roles; and become adept at playing a believable transsexual. While Martinez wasn't under that kind of linguistic or physical pressure, the less showy role of Enrique still presented its own unique requirements.   Dimitrios Kambouris/Wireimage.com Photo Co-star Javier Camara For one thing, while Almodovar has said that the movie is not autobiographical, it is a story close to his heart, a screenplay that he worked on for over a decade, and Martinez is playing a young, gay director in 1980, precisely the moment when his director was releasing his first feature, Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls from the Heap. Martinez and the director talked through the issue. The actor says he was adamant on the subject, "I didn't want to act 'Pedro Almodovar.'” The director agreed, so the two set about creating a unique character, one where the only traces of Almodovar that remained were the superficial similarities. "We never tried to play Enrique from Pedro's perspective," Martinez says proudly. With that issue resolved, Martinez threw himself into researching the role. Back in 1980, after all, he was just a toddler. The milieu in which Bad Education is set is smack in the middle of the ‘Movida,’ the cultural earthquake that shook Spain in the wake of dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco's 1975 death. The country embraced its newfound freedom in all senses of the word, politically, sexually, and artistically. Martinez felt that in order to play Enrique, he had to understand him and the place and time from, which he sprung. That meant giving himself a crash course in the 1980s and the Movida. He describes the run-up to shooting the film as intense, but he still took the time outside of rehearsals to immerse himself in the movies, documentaries, books, and magazines of Enrique's time. "The character is much more complete, because of all that background," Martinez observes. "I felt that I had to do it. Pedro demands it of you; you have to offer him a lot. But it was great. The other possibility was to read the script and then talk with Pedro. That's fine, but it wouldn't be honest for me or for Pedro or for the rest of the crew that worked so hard." Martinez took the same approach to preparing for the gay aspect of the role. Intent on appearing natural the minute the cameras started rolling, the actor admits, that, "I fooled around, acting like a queen, acting gay outside the movie, playing around, playing the part." The actor says one particular scene presented him with his biggest challenge. On the face of it, the sequence sounds simple enough as Martinez merely had to sit still and subtly react as another character shares with Enrique life-altering information. But that stillness gave him fits. "All that time when I'm sitting, listening to him, it was difficult, because one thing I like to see in other actors, one thing that I really admire, is when the actor expresses something without moving a muscle in the face,” he explains. “That was what was required of me in that scene, and I was scared I wouldn't be able to [do it]." The completed film astounds him. He is not sure how long he sat in stunned silence the first time he saw it, but he remembers Lola Garcia, Almodovar's assistant asking him if he liked it. Oh yes, he exclaims. "I was amazed, completely amazed, in shock,” he says. “The film was coming out from the screen in all different directions. It was amazing and I was so, so, so happy." Having risen to every challenge Almodovar and Bad Education put before him, Martinez says the experience remains transforming. "Enrique is the fullest, most mature character I've ever done,” he insists. “Now I feel that I can do anything. I feel so confident. I grew up with this movie." Martinez recently played the Woody Allen role in Play It Again, Sam on stage, which temporarily satisfied his comic desires, but he yearns to do more. On film, he has always been a dramatic actor, which surprises him. "I always saw myself as a comedian, but I don't know,” he says. “Nobody calls me to make a comedy. I thought, 'What is happening to me?' I need to make that comedy," he pleads only half-jokingly, adding for emphasis, "I. Want. To. Make. A. Comedy. Please!" Ebullient and humorous, Martinez certainly has the makings of a fine comic actor, so he will probably get his wish. And while Bernal was the one soaking up ink as one of filmdom's current It boys, it was Martinez who received an Audience Award nomination for Best Actor at the 2004 European Film Awards.

Bad Education Interviews

Interview with Gael García Bernal and Fele Martínez

Bad Education
November 3, 2004

Gael García Bernal
Fele Martínez

Question: How far apart did you film Motorcycle Diaries and Bad Education, were they months apart?

Gael: No, they were immediately, first there was Motorcycle Diaries, then I had two weeks off and then went on to do the other one. Both of them were like eight months each, including the preparation - a long, long time, but I enjoy it that way. I wish it would always be like this because I enjoy having the [time] to prepare a film properly - to prepare, to work at it, and to enjoy it.

I like getting into a place and getting to know the context, studying and developing it. Both films, the context was as important as the characters, so it was very important to do that investigation. And I enjoyed doing that. It kind of makes me feel that I did the homework instead of just leaving it to see if the alchemy exists.

Question: What all did you have to do to prepare for this?

Gael: Amongst a zillion things, was a Spanish accent, which is very far from my accent. Playing the woman - I had to practice so long with high heels and with all the paraphernalia that comes with it - shaving a lot, waxing, which actually I can recommend to you very good places. We can exchange beauty tips.

I just prepared as much as I could. I wanted to do a girl that didn't have to prove that she was a woman, didn't have to demonstrate it all the time, but had it assumed that she was a girl. It was great because the whole time, every single woman I met I tried to copy what she did - I think the secret is in the hands.

Also to experience the cultural baggage that these characters have that I certainly don't share because I wasn't born in that time, I wasn't born in that particular situation, I didn't go to any Catholic school at all, education in Mexico was completely secular, so the word God appears in another aspect of your life, it doesn't appear in your education or in the politics of everyday life.

I tried to watch myself in all this context so as to get to interpret what this reality was and tried to convince Pedro [Almodóvar] that I was able to draw the picture that he had drawn 10 years ago and that he had experienced, which was very difficult because - it's a very different type of mechanic.

Question: What about dealing with the complexity of this character? You've got a character who's really one person, but he's pretending to be another person, then you have flashbacks in which he's playing that other person and then you've got film where he's acting a part as that other person. How did you deal with all those different facets of the character? Was that a particular problem for you?

Gael: Pedro had it really well established, really detailed diagram that he drew. It wasn't that difficult thanks to him because he was the one that made everything so complex, but at the same time he was the one who was able to simplify it so that my very naïve understanding could be satisfied. Every time I had a doubt, he's an encyclopedia of himself and of his movies so he knows exactly where we're at and what is required.

That's what is incredible about Pedro is that you trust him immensely, there's things that you do with him that you wouldn't do with any other director because of the way that he develops and puts forward this trust. For some reason, you know that you're trusting in his own point of view. You might not have the same point of view as him, but the job of an actor is really exciting to put yourself into that job of employee and to say, "What do you want, chief?" It's great because you learn a lot thanks to that. Acting is interpreting in a truthful way, with fictitious stimuli.

Question: What is it like to work with Almodóvar? Is he a demanding director?

Gael: Very demanding and very specific in what he wants. He has a way of working unlike any other director. I don't know how to describe it - it's just different. He creates a world from the beginning. There is a world that he creates off the set as well and it's incredibly exciting to be part of that, but it's very demanding. And it's a lot of pressure being put on you, like you have to know before you're coming that you're going to work with Almodóvar and you're going to go into a circus, or a game, and it's incredibly fun, therefore you learn a lot. You get to know amazing people, but the work - he doesn't compromise his vision, which nowadays is so difficult to do. I think good filmmaking has to do only with that - with stressing your point of view. Good films are honest points of view.

Question: So he didn't have to talk you into some of the tougher scenes? You just went in expecting that no matter what the scene was you had to do it and had do it his way.

Gael: Contrary to what one would think he's very reserved with those scenes. You've never seen any male genitals in his films and they could have been there, but he's very reserved, discrete. With sex scenes, he goes, "Okay guys, let's do it quickly and I know it's uncomfortable."

You as an actor, you try to do as much as you can. I've never had any second thoughts on whether or not to do this or that, because it's always part of the job and it's part of something I want to purge in a way. It's very exciting to destroy taboos - taboos have that fragility; they don't last; they're very trivial. You do this film and then you come out thinking, "That's wasn't that much of a big deal." It sounds worse when we're talking about it, but when you see it you go, "the sex scenes are okay." You kind of accept it more once it's done. It nice to explore those issues and he gets even more nervous than the actors.

Question: Did you have to go through a lengthy audition process to get this role? Did you have to convince him that you could do it?

Gael: To convince him, but also to convince myself that I was going to be able to pull it out, because it was a difficult one. So it was like an exchange of "Am I able to do it - and - is this what you want?" It was a process that lasted two days of casting, different things - dressing up as a girl, seeing how good I looked as a girl, walking, then doing the other character to see the differences. It was great because you got a glimpse of how the working process is going to be.

Question: Did you surprise yourself how you looked as a woman?

Gael: Yes, a little bit. I put a lot of effort into it; it was nice.

Question: Your friends were probably teasing you a little bit?

Gael: No, on the contrary. Teasing me, but teasing me very seriously - I don't know if they were trying to hook up with me or just teasing. I don't know what's worse.

Question: You've really had a string of remarkable films over the last few years. Is this pure luck that these films have been offered to you or have you gone and sought them out?

Gael: It's really nice. It's definitely luck or destiny, but there is something that needs this to happen. In most cases, from my point of view, for my part, is just reacting instinctively and subjectively and as intellectually as I can to respond to any script or story that's being proposed to me. I try to do that and listen very carefully to what I want and to what I need at that moment, and the necessity for me to tell certain stories. I never thought of where this or that film is going to take me, or if this is going to give me that, because I think the perfect plan never works. I would never like to form a niche of doing things from a plan because I choose to be an actor to be free therefore I want to decide what to do all the time.

Question: What is it like working with Almodóvar?

Fele: For me it was marvelous shooting. He's a genius. He lives for the cinema and he works with a passion that I never see in other movie directors. Working with him was great because he gives you all the information you need and tons more.

Question: Did you get this part because you'd worked with him before or did you have to go through a whole audition process?

Fele: No, it was amazing because he gives me the script and says, "Read it and pay attention to Enrique Goded because I want you to do this part." I read it and I was so scared, "Why?" Sure, I worked with him once when I did Talk To Her, when I did the first character in the silent movie, but it was an opposite character than Enrique's. For me, it was a very big responsibility to do this film. It was very important for me to do the best I could and it took me by surprise, so for two weeks I was kind of panicked about it, but once I started working with him, it was a totally different thing.

We worked so hard to do this movie. We were training, we went to the gym about 2 and a half months and we worked hard, we were under a very strict diet, it was horrible because I couldn't eat anything. The physical training and then all our rehearsals, day by day, I was feeling surer and surer. At home, I started to read books or magazines, I saw documentaries, short films, movies and I heard only 80's music and it was a marvelous process.

Question: Your transformation included the fact that you had to slim down for this part, but the press notes said Almodóvar had you do something to your voice as well.

Fele: Oh sure, besides having to lose 12 pounds, Pedro insisted I speak lower. My third panic attack was I needed an attitude. I had all the feelings, the information about the character, but I didn't have the attitude. How did Enrique smoke? How did he make love? How did he walk? How did he look? I couldn't find it, but when I was reading a book that speaks about the 80's, the book talks about one guitar player in one Spanish group and his attitude. It gave me the key.

Question: Do you want to crossover and do movies here in English?

Fele: I'd love to but it's not my objective. I did a movie called Darkness; it's entirely in English. It was so hard for me because I had worse English than now, but I like to do things that are not easy for me. I love acting, so if somebody gives me a script that interests me, or a character, I like to do it. I don't mind if it's in English, German, Italian, or French.

Question: Since you're playing a filmmaker in the movie, were you playing a version of Almodóvar? Did you feel a certain responsibility because this was partially autobiographical?

Fele: Pedro told me this is not an autobiographical movie. He made it clear before we started rehearsals because when I read the script the first time, I told him, "It's you." And he said, "It's not me. I wrote it, so there's a few parts of me in the character, but not only in Enrique, but in every character and in every movie, there are some little parts of Pedro inside of them." So I tried to do a character that did not resemble Pedro.

Question: Did you know Gael before the movie started? How did you approach your scenes with him?

Fele: I met Gael in Pedro's office, in the production office and we started to build a relationship. We were training in the morning and rehearsing in the afternoon and it made a very good relationship between us. He's a very good actor and I was amazed at his accent. It was great to work with him... and to make love with him - we laughed a lot shooting this part. It was so funny.

Question: You just recently were doing "Play It Again, Sam" on stage, correct?

Fele: Yes. I did it for around six months. I like comedy, but nobody calls me to make comedy movies, I only can make comedies on the stage.

Question: Do you enjoy doing stage work?

Fele: Yes, I love it. The reason is you are acting in front of people, not in front of a camera. It's so different to me. When you are making a movie, doing a take, you have an audience - you have the carpenters, light guys, somebody who's working on his own stuff. It's normal when you have a very good scene that people clap, but it's not the same to feel people. And 5 minutes before the curtain goes up, the feeling is this horrible intensity, but it's great, some kind of drug - pure adrenalin.

Question: Pedro has a small group of people that he works with over and over again. Are you now part of this group?

Fele: I hope so. If Pedro wants that, I'm here, because it was marvelous to work with him.  

Bad Education: Pedro Almodovar Interview

Pedro Almodovar was born in Calzada de Calatrava, in the province of Ciudad Real, in the heart of La Mancha, in the 50s. At the age of eight, he emigrated with his family to Extremadura. There he studied in elementary and high school with the Salesian Fathers and the Franciscans respectively. At sixteen, he left home and settled in Madrid, with no money and no job, but with a very specific project: to study and make films. It was impossible to enrol in the Official Film School. Franco had just closed it. As he couldn’t learn the language, he decided to learn the content, that is, life, to live… Despite the dictatorship that was suffocating the country, for an adolescent from the provinces Madrid represented culture, independence and freedom. He worked at many sporadic jobs, but he couldn’t buy his first Super-8 mm camera until he got a “serious” job at the National Telephone Company of Spain where he remained for twelve years, working as an office assistant, twelve years that he also devoted to multiple activities that really formed him as a filmmaker and as a person. In the morning, in the Telephone Company, he gained a real knowledge of the Spanish middle class at the start of the consumer era, its dramas and its misfortunes, a gold mine for a future storyteller. In the afternoon-evening he wrote, loved, did theatre with the mythical independent group Los Goliardos, made films in Super-8 (his only school as a film maker). He collaborated with various underground magazines, wrote short stories, some of which were published. He was a member of the parodic punk-rock group, Almódovar and McNamara, etc. He was fortunate in that the opening of his first film in commercial cinemas coincided with the birth of Spanish democracy. After a year and a half of difficult filming on 16mm, in 1980 he opened Pepi, Luci, Bom a no-budget film, made cooperatively with the rest of the cast and crew, all beginners except for Carmen Maura. In 1986, with his brother Agustín, he founded the production company El Deseo, S.A. Their first project was Law of Desire. Since then they have produced the following ten films which Pedro wrote and directed, and also produced other young directors. International recognition came with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 1988. Since then, his films have opened in every corner of the world. With All About my Mother he got his first Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and also the Golden Globe, the César, three European Film Awards, the David de Donatello, two BAFTAs, seven Goyas and another forty-five awards. Three years later, Talk to Her had the same or better luck (Oscar for Best Script, five European Film Awards, two BAFTAs, the Nastro de Argento, the César and many more awards throughout the world except in Spain). 2003 has been one of the best years for El Deseo S.A. As well as the critical and public acclaim for Talk to Her, it produced and opened Chill Out! by Félix Sabroso and Dunia Ayaso and My Life Without Me by Isabel Coixet, nominated for Best Film and Best Director in the European Film Awards, a social phenomenon in Japan and a great critical success throughout Europe. This leads us to the present day and Bad Education, the story of two children, Ignacio and Enrique who discover love, cinema and fear in a religious school at the start of the 60s. Father Manolo, the school principal and their literature teacher, is witness to and part of their discoveries. The three characters meet again, at the end of the 70s and in the 80s and on each occasion they learn more about the lives and deaths of those closest to them. Interview: The Spinning Image (TSI): In Law of Desire (1986) the transsexual played by Carmen Maura goes into the church of the school where she studied as a boy. She finds a priest playing the organ, in the choir. The priest asks her who she is. Carmen confesses to him that she had been a pupil at the school and that he (the priest) had been in love with him. Is that the origin of Bad Education? Pedro Almodovar (PA): More or less. Long before that, I had written a short story in which a transvestite goes back to the school where he had studied in order to blackmail the priests who had harassed him when he was a boy. While filming Law of Desire I remembered that story and it gave me the idea of Carmen's character going into the church at his school and meeting a priest who loved him when she was a boy. By then I was considering the idea of developing the short story in detail. Carmen is a foreshadow of Zahara. TSI: There is also a film director in Law of Desire. PA: Yes, and like Fele Martínez's character he mixes his personal desires with his work and in the end he pays a very high price for it. I've always been interested by the story of the artist who works with his own guts. It's a fascinating adventure even if it never ends well. TSI: In your first statements you denied that the film was autobiographical. PA: Paco Umbral says that everything that isn't autobiographical is plagiarism. The film is autobiographical but in a deeper sense. I am behind those characters but I'm not telling my life story. TSI: I believe you were the soloist in your school choir... PA: Yes. And I sang all the time, masses in Latin, motets, etc. I sang at all the religious ceremonies and the celebrations. And I guess I didn't do it badly. The priests recorded some of the songs I sang and played them at the door of the church to attract the faithful. And I remember that we filled the church. I'd give anything to recover those tapes, but I don't think they exist. What I most enjoyed in my time at school were the religious ceremonies. I'm agnostic, but I think the Catholic liturgy has a dazzling richness, it fascinates me and moves me. But it's been a long time since I went to mass. I don't know what it's like now. TSI: Does Fr. Manolo exist? PA: Yes, as a character. TSI: But did he really exist? PA: No. He's a made-up character, although for some scenes I was inspired by two priests at school. TSI: For what scenes in particular? PA: The harassment by the river and in the sacristy. TSI: Are they real scenes?! PA: Two schoolmates told me about them. If you're a boarder at a school you eventually find out about everything. TSI: If the two people who were the inspiration for Fr. Manolo are alive, aren't you afraid they may react? PA: Admitting that they were being alluded to would be like accusing themselves. I'm a director and a scriptwriter. For me, Fr. Manolo is a character, one with whom, I should mention in passing, I'm very satisfied. The character isn't a weapon thrown against the Catholic church (which does have a lot of problems to solve, including its priests' sexuality. If celibacy didn't exist, there wouldn't be so many cases of abuse.) I didn't create Fr. Manolo and his prolongation, Mr. Berenguer, in order to attack the church. They are elements that allow me to talk about two of the many faces of passion. When Fr. Manolo is played by Daniel Giménez-Cacho, the passion he feels for the boy, and his abuse of power, make him into an executioner. When he calls himself Mr. Berenguer and has cast off his habits and falls in love with Juan, the same terrible character plays the opposite role in the roulette of passion. Now he is a victim. The film is inconceivable without those two characters, who are really one, and without their incarnation by Daniel Giménez Cacho and Lluis Homar respectively. Although they are two veterans, they were two great discoveries for me. I can never thank them enough for their lack of prejudice, their depth and their unending willingness to satisfy all the demands of a director as insatiable as I am. TSI: What can you tell me about the rest of the cast? PA: They are superb. Fele Martínez, Francisco Boira, the kids, Javier Cámara, Alberto Ferreiro, Petra Martínez, Francisco Maestre, and, naturally, Gael. It's a miracle to get it right with all the actors, especially when you don't know any of them, except Javier and Fele. TSI: Fele doesn't seem like himself, physically. PA: I made him slim down and train for four or five months, until he got another (better) body, another physical attitude. He was delighted, because everyone found him much sexier. As well as the physical aspect, we also worked on his tone of voice. I lowered its tessitura. He gave the character his heart, all of it, and his skin. I believe that from now on Fele will do other kinds of roles, less teen, more adult. He's an all-round actor. He can span the two extremes, torrid drama and crazy comedy. As happens in a different way with Javier Cámara. Javier is very versatile, he works in all the media (cinema, television, theatre, cabaret) and in all the genres. In Talk to Her, even though the role was dramatic I discovered his gift for humour, and even though it's brief, his character in Bad Education was like an oasis for the whole crew. Javier is a comedian virtuoso. He has that special gift that goes beyond acting and that can't be learned. His composition of "Paca" is rich, exhaustive, human, hilarious, dangerous for whoever is at his side because you only have eyes for him. A natural "scene-stealer". TSI: Poor Gael! PA: Not in the slightest. Gael is going to work a lot and he's going to make lots of money. TSI: How and why did you choose him, after cross-dressing every Spanish actor in the prime of young manhood? PA: By auditioning him two or three times, like everyone else. TSI: What did he have that the others didn't? PA: He was very attractive as a boy and as a girl. And that was essential for understanding his character's relationship with the others, the intensity with which everyone became obsessed with him. TSI: Is Gael the villain of the story? PA: Bad Education is the opposite of a film with good guys and villains. In any case, I never judge characters whatever they do. My job is to "represent them", "explain them in all their complexity" and come up with an entertaining spectacle with all that. It isn't good for a film that the director judges his characters, even if they do atrocious things. Juan, the base-character that Gael plays, is a guy who doesn't stop at anything as far as he gets what he ambitions. He is capable of killing, if the situation comes up, of seducing and of having sex with men and women depending on his convenience. His absolute lack of scruples gives him an incredible strength, and makes of him a walking menace. But if you don't cross yourself in his ambition's path, Juan is a normal guy that can live perfectly integrated in society without anyone detecting the danger that he brings along. I like to compare it to those Patricia Highsmith's amoral characters, Ripley, for example, to whom crime does not affect morally, but ends up refining them, cultivating them and making them charmer. Considering the movie as an obscure "thriller", as I said before, the character of Gael, represents the typical "femme fatale", (in his case "enfant terrible") because he leads all the characters who come in contact with him to their downfall. And Downfall is the Spanish title for Double Indemnity (by the genius Billy Wilder), "noir" among the "noir"-est, to which I'm paying homage. Juan and Mr. Berenguer go to the Museum of Giant Figures in Valencia to plan a murder. Juan tells his lover that after they carry it out they mustn't see each other for a while. With the naivety of the typical manipulated lover, Mr. Berenguer thought that the murder would unite them forever but, on the contrary, it drives them apart and he can't bear that idea but it's too late to avoid it. This scene is a reference (and reverences) to the scene in the supermarket in Double Indemnity. Even though I really like how it turned out, I'm aware that no film in colour can surpass the image of Barbary Stanwyck in a curling blonde wig and large dark glasses, surrounded by stacks of canned food, all of it, including Fred MacMurray, in glorious black and white. TSI: What was it like working with Gael? PA: A challenge, for him and for me. It isn't easy to play a character that is actually three, especially when two of them are very different physically. I guess it's the hardest work that Gael has done to date. On top of the difficulty of changing sex and not looking grotesque, there was the accent. I wanted him to speak Spanish, not Mexican which is very different... TSI: Are you satisfied with the result? PA: Yes. I hope that the spectators won't let themselves be influenced by the fact that one of his characters is so hateful. To end up, I don't want to forget Alberto Ferreiro, Francisco Maestre, Petra Martínez and the kids . They were all wonderful surprises. With Raúl García and Ignacio Pérez (the kids), I hit the jackpot. You never know what can happen with one child, never mind two. I have no experience with child actors. I directed Ignacio and Raúl as if they were adults, and I think the result is very moving. I'm very proud of that part of the film (the story of the two boys and their relationship with God and Fr. Manolo), perhaps because before I started shooting it seemed to be the most difficult and most delicate part. I'm very grateful to Joserra Cadiñanos, the casting director, who during the shooting helped me explain to Ignacio and Raúl what they were doing and why they were doing it. Joserra was my best intermediary. TSI: The structure of Bad Education is at least as complicated as that of Talk to Her... PA: I think it's even more so. As in Talk to Her in Bad Education there is a film within a film, but in this case it lasts half an hour, which is even more risky. Really, the film tells three stories, about three concentric triangles, which in the end turn out to be just one story. TSI: The story of a director-scriptwriter who is looking for a story... PA: And who finds it. As Truman Capote said, quoting St. Teresa, "There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers"... TSI: Why so many voiceovers? PA: The voiceover is used to explain what isn't seen and to speed up the narration rhythm. It is as if a character in the movie visits you, sits down in front of you at the table and sums up part of his/her story. Voiceovers have been essential for me to shift from one story to the other, from one period to the other. The good thing about having the two protagonists, one a film director (that is to say, a narrator, someone who investigates so that everything is understood) and the other possessing a tight secrecy attitude, intrinsic quality to the impostor's nature, the good thing about having these two opposed characters, I say, is that it makes us understand lots of keys to the Gael's character through the director (Fele Martínez). The spectator knows what Fele knows, so he/she identifies with Fele, and it's his eyes and his "voiceovers" what explain his discoveries about himself and the mysterious and ferocious figure of Gael-Juan. TSI: One of the elements in the plot that works best is when we discover that two of the characters are brothers. PA: Yes, and I'd like to keep that a secret. I adore the feeling of fraternity, and I've always liked films about siblings: Warren Beatty getting a beating in a parking lot for defending the honour of his sister, Barbara Loden, in Splendor in the Grass. Legs Diamond, in the film by Budd Boetticher, getting caught because of his brother's carelessness. The Bonnie and Clyde gang, led by two brothers. The entire Godfather saga has given us marvelous scenes of siblings who love each other, beat each other up, protect each other and kill each other. All of Ma Baker's children in No Orchids for Miss Blandish (written by James Hadley Chase, directed by John L. Clowes). Bloody Mama, by Roger Corman. Fierce mothers, leaders of gangs made up of their own children. I'm moved by all of Alain Delon's brothers in Rocco and His Brothers. Even Michael Jackson and Latoya Jackson, deformed mirrors of each other. Natalie Wood and George Chakiris in West Side Story. Hayley Mills playing her own twin in The Parent Trap, the Siamese twins in Sisters, by early Brian de Palma. The Marx Brothers in any of their films. The touching Harry Dean Stanton in Paris-Texas and his silent visit to his brother, Dean Stockwell. The two Mills sisters in Fallen Angel, by Preminger, the two delightful spinsters in Arsenic and Old Lace and Shelley Winters' little orphans, pursued by the evil Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter. And even, although Raymond Chandler's dialogue prevented the slightest sentimentality, Lauren Bacall defending her indefensible sister in The Big Sleep. At times the fraternal relationship gets complicated (How could it not!) when there is sex. I love Sam Sheppard's play Fool For Love, and the wonderful novel Middlesex in which a brother and sister even get married. Fraternity is a sentiment in disuse, replaced in present-day life by friendship, but it isn't exactly the same; fraternity springs from two great sentiments, love and friendship, united by something as unfathomable as consanguinity. Among the films about siblings that I remember, I haven't mentioned Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich), a "grand guignol" which the two immense leading ladies elevate in category and genre. Two sisters, both of them former child stars, live together when they are adults, even though they hate each other. One of them (Bette Davis) ends up killing the other (Joan Crawford). There is something of this in Bad Education, although in a hidden way. When they were little, Juan (Ángel Andrade) was jealous of his older brother Ignacio because he was better at everything. Jealousy in younger siblings is very common. But in Juan's case, it grew over the years. The two boys wanted to be artistes. Everything was easy for Ignacio, singing, dancing, writing, reciting, transforming himself and acting. Everything that Juan would have liked to do, Ignacio did better. And Juan hated him in silence until Ignacio gave him cause to hate him openly when he began to take drugs and dress as a woman in the little town where they lived. Family life was absolute hell because of Ignacio. The mother, who had a weak heart, was in an unbearable situation The father couldn't stand the shame and started to drink more and more, until one winter's day they found him dead in the street, in a frozen puddle. Out of obedience to his mother, and in his own interest, Juan went to live with his brother in Valencia. He enrolled in an acting school and kept an eye on Ignacio, so that his mother wouldn't worry so much. It was the start of democracy in Spain and in Valencia Ignacio lived a very free life, devoted to writing, to changing his body for that of a real woman, and to using heroin to anaesthetise the tension produced by his lifestyle. Then Mr. Berenguer, Ignacio's old literature teacher, turned up. He had hung up his habits and was living in Valencia and working in a publisher's. The appearance of the former Fr. Manolo dynamites the two brothers' existence. TSI: After thirteen years, (Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!) you're working with José Luis Alcaine again as director of photography. PA: What a great idea it was to call him! José Luis has done a splendid job. I barely had to tell him what I wanted. Music and photography are two abstract elements, hard to explain. I turn up for the shoot, laden with references, but the director of photography has to sense, guess, smell the atmosphere that goes best with the story. Or atmospheres, because in Bad Education there are a lot of films together, and very different aesthetics coexist within the same story. Alcaine was immensely inspired every day of this very hot shoot. As a professional he's at his peak, and I think we've both matured as people and the result has been a perfect marriage. TSI: And Gaultier? PA: I called on him to dress Zahara, in particular her outfit for the show, which is a masterpiece as regards cut and conception. It's a flesh-colored dress, tight-fitted to the neck like a second skin, that gives the impression of total nudity. The ass, the tits and the pubis are made with sequins and brown and pink glass bead and tones. The dress in itself represents false, naked femininity. He also undertook to give a touch to Ignacio-adult's gabardines and shorts. Jean-Paul is like a big child. That's why he'll never make a vulgar dress. Working with him is great fun. I adore him. TSI: This is the fifth time you've worked with Alberto Iglesias... PA: Alberto Iglesias is the only marvelous artist I know without any ego problems, the only one I make repeat the themes over and over again without him losing neither his enthusiasm nor his creativity. He is a musician and a person out of the ordinary. For this occasion, he has built a powerful, original column of sound on which the film rests, like a baby rests in its mother's arms. Alberto surprises me in every movie, after the mixing I can not think of a musical costume that suits better Bad Education than the one that Alberto has created for it. TSI: To judge from the answers to your own questions, you give the impression of being very happy with this film. PA: I'm never happy, but, well... Let's say I'm pretty cheerful. TSI: Future projects? PA: To recover my sleep and my waistline!

Author:

Darren Jones