2024-03-21 03:01:00
Sergi López He was born in Villanueva i Geltrú, 45 kilometers from Barcelona, but developed a large part of his career in France. Over thirty years he won several awards, including a César in his adopted country, and walked the red carpets of the main festivals in the world thanks to his work alongside directors of the stature of François Ozon (Ricky), Stephen Frears (hidden business), Woody Allen (Rifkin’s Festival), Guillermo del Toro (the unforgettable villain Captain Vidal from The Pan’s Labyrinth), Isabel Coixet (Map of the sounds of Tokyo), Terry Gilliam (The man who killed Don Quixote), Albert Serra (Pacifictiony Alice Rohrwacher (Happy Lazarus). He has, and to spare, what is called prestige, a condition that, however, does not affect his affable and spontaneous character. Much less in a language with a joke always ready to go out into the world: there is no fame, no money, no marquee promises capable of clouding the humor of this man trained in the field of theatrical comedy and whose first acting experiences, like him He himself admits, “they were playing idiots.”
“I started not so young, at 16, doing amateur theater in my town, where there could be everyone from children to old people. I was a disaster at school and I wanted to study theater, but I couldn’t enter the official school and I ended up taking clown and acrobatics courses, which was what there was. We did very Martian things in the street. Later I did start doing theater, but also comedy. Even today he continued writing plays of that style. The clown, playing an idiot, is something that challenges me and that will last,” he says before Page 12 during its time at the Punta del Este International Film Festival. The Catalan traveled to the spa city to be a jury for the Ibero-American Fiction Competition and receive – in sandals! – a lifetime achievement award, which from this Thursday will add a new link with the commercial premiere of The wind that sweeps awaydirected by Paula Hernández and based on the book of the same name by Selva Almada.
“They asked me if I wanted them to send me a copy, but in these cases I prefer not to read. I feel like it doesn’t work for me, because in the end what we do is the script and not the novel,” she is honest when asked about her approach to this adaptation led by the person in charge of Inheritance, Rain, The sleepwalkers y The Siamese. There he plays Gringo Brauer, the mechanic in charge of repairing the car in which Leni (Almudena González) and her father, Reverend Pearson (Chilean Alfredo Castro), travel through Argentine Mesopotamia. He is a sullen, dry character with a face of few friends, three characteristics very far from the person who gives him life.. If even those friends who knew him “with the imbecilities” now ask him what he is doing and are surprised by the clash between the usual circumspection of his most authorial works and the tone of his plays, with Not only y Livingstone 30/40 as the most representative.
-You would hardly have obtained the same prestige dedicating yourself to theatrical comedy…
-The thing is Cinema has this half-childish and immature thing about glamour.. It’s a movie on a screen that you look at, but around it are the star system, the awards, the festivals, the red carpets, the photos, the lights…Those things are for the eyes and to make it seem like it’s something important. Comic theater is like a mass where something very direct happens with the audience. Sometimes it’s strange working in film, you stop on the set, people shut up, you film and that’s it, then things come that you’re not involved in, like editing, sales, advertising. In the theater you are there all the time, so it has a much greater impact on the body. But it is true that cinema has what can be called prestige.
-Your “discoverer” in France is Manuel Poirier, with whom you filmed nine films between 1992 (Antonio’s girlfriend) y 2007 (The House). Is that type of chemistry with a director built or based on common sensibilities?
-I honestly don’t know. At that moment something half magical happened. I read in an advertisement that they were looking for an actor with a Spanish accent for a first feature film. He had made videos of clowns and homely things, but I still went to the casting, he accepted me and I put myself in his hands because I had no fucking idea about anything. We did that, then he called me for another movie, then again, until we did Western, the fifth, and we end up in Cannes. There, seeing in the newspapers that it said “Sergi López, film actor”, I became aware. I repeated with many directors, but I am sure that with others I would never repeat. It’s like with romantic couples. There is no formula for “too similar” or “too different.” Yes, with some there is a chemistry, an inexplicable thing that you don’t know why it happens. It’s also true that I was very lucky, because if I had met a guy who had no idea, he would shoot a shitty movie and wouldn’t work in film anymore.
-Is the general assessment of your work different in France and Spain?
-I never felt mistreated in Spain. I’m doing well in France, and it’s normal that they don’t know me as well. But I feel that In general, in France they believe in cinema more because they consider it a national heritage. The same as in Argentina…or at least that’s how it was. In Spain, culture, cinema, theater and music are something in the background. It is a fascist country. The root is that, the idea of culture as being used so that “something sounds out there.” In France they have that somewhat chauvinistic thing that makes them believe it, but when I see how they promote audiovisuals I say “damn, but that’s great.” They believe that their cheese, their wine and their cinema are the best and they defend them, they protect them. A film actor or actress has a more solid value than in Spain, where it is a little lighter.
-Perhaps something similar occurs in Argentina, where sometimes the assessment begins from a prior recognition from abroad.
-Yes, it’s true, in many cultures there is sometimes a bit of an inferiority complex. Of course that doesn’t happen in France, where they have a superiority complex. They don’t care that you have worked in Brazil, Spain, Venezuela or wherever. They only care about France and, at most, the United States. Maybe that’s why they don’t call me so much from Spain, because they must think that since I work abroad I earn a lot, that I wouldn’t want to work with them because I’ve already been to Cannes or that I’m covered in things. They do call me from France, although it is also true that more films are filmed. It’s like a dog chasing its tail: I started there and the more I film, the more they know me.
-In an interview for the film Ismael, you said that director Marcelo Piñeyro did something that works very well with you: “He came, gave me the script and told me to read it. No ‘I wrote it for you.’” What makes you feel when people tell you “I wrote this paper thinking about you”?
-I feel like it is emotional blackmail that puts me in an uncomfortable place. I don’t think it’s very smart to tell someone “I’m in love with your work, read this thing I wrote for you.” I prefer that they give it to me and that’s it. Those types of comments are noise, interference. Besides, We have the noise of an ego that everyone inflates to us. Everything leads you to believe that you are special. I agree that actors need to be protected a little, but the important thing is to focus on the story. In addition, there is always fear and the possibility of things going wrong. We can’t say, “Oh yeah, I did a similar scene last week that was good.” You have to be there, alive. It has always been useful for me to downplay the importance of my work.: It’s not me, it’s the story, the script, the director who has a point of view and you are there to represent it. If not, I feel more watched, more judged, more insecure. The other way I am more relaxed and take the pressure off. I like that more than the idea of ”everyone keep quiet because I’m going to do something important.”
-You’re not a method actor, then.
-Not at all. I’m more of acrobats and clowns, of the idea that it’s a game. “Today I play that I am a millionaire guy”, perfect. Yes, I can look at how millionaires walk and so on, but in the long run there is a lot that is intuitive. If I do it wrong, the director will tell me what to correct.
-In recent years you have worked on films by directors of all ages. Are you interested in getting involved with young people, with debut films?
-I suppose that when you get older, youth becomes a mystery. I’m lucky that some young directors dare to send me scripts, but I don’t do it if I don’t like it. Now, if it’s a first feature film by someone who doesn’t have a big budget and is good, I see a way to do it. I have worked on things I didn’t like, and I suffered a lot. It’s always a risk. When you start to notice that what you are doing is not right… it is ugly…
-Both in Spain and Argentina the relationship between the State and support for culture is under discussion. What reading do you make of that dispute?
-That we have to do something against fascism and that we do not realize to what extent we are integrating malicious discourse. In Spain, friends of my son who know me and have left-wing voters as parents, are with the idea that cinema and theater are subsidized worlds. If the State has to protect and shield something, it is health, culture and education. But little by little the idea that culture is secondary and that if health is private, the better, is coming into play. This individualistic and hypercapitalist discourse ends up corrupting our thoughts.