Stephen Frears: “Women are more interesting than men”

2024-03-16 14:53:39

The first meeting with Stephen Frears (Leicester, 1941) is in the elevator. He goes up and down from doing interviews, he is tired of the heat with which Seville woke up, a city he arrived at a few hours ago. His schedule hasn’t stopped since then.

In the few interviews he gives, he is usually a Man of few wordsbut in the meeting with the press, the British film director is relaxed, chats friendly about the city and jokes that in the United Kingdom they don’t have these temperatures.

The director of films like ‘An Irish Coffee’ or ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ is on an express visit to the Andalusian capital on the occasion of the second edition of Hay Festival Fórum in Seville. The event, which takes place from March 14 to 17, brings together writers, journalists and film directors to talk about literature, architecture, the environment and other topics.

From historical dramas to wry comedies, Stephen Frears has done it all. He discovers his creative process in @hayfestival_esp Sevilla

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— Cajasol Foundation (@Cajasol) March 13, 2024

Con exquisite ‘British’ manners and with a look very in line with his compatriots who are visiting Seville these days on the eve of Holy Week, Frears reviews almost 60 years of career and the scripts with which he has fallen in love in a filmography loaded with awards but without Hollywood statuettes.

The director is responsible for some of the most important films in European cinema in which female protagonists such as Queen Elizabeth II or Florence Foster Jenkins recognize that “women are more interesting than men“.”My experience has always been of very strong women from my mother, to the women I have lived with and married and now my daughter,” she explains.

Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Glenn Close and now Kate Winslet have all worked with him. The director indicates that, for him, making films is having a conversation: “I talk to them, I don’t make them do anything, I let them do it and record long conversations“Although he does point out that “Helen (Mirren) said the other day that she was terrified playing the queen,” but that he was directing her “calmed her down.”

Frears has been one of the people who has best told the history of the United Kingdom, from ‘Victoria and Abdul’, one of his last films to ‘My Beautiful Laundry’, about a homosexual relationship in Magaret Thatcher’s London. She now laments how “complex” life is in her country because of the “stupid” Brexit. “The Labor party doesn’t want to talk about it but it was a complete act of foolishness,” he comments, ensuring that he “never” would have done it because there are people who are having a “terrible” time. Of course, he warns that in England “a change is coming and things are going to be better.”

From ‘The Queen’ to ‘Kategate’

On numerous occasions, Frears has declared anti-monarchicalalthough one of his best-known works is ‘The Queen’, the portrait he made of how Isabel II handled Lady Di’s death.

The artist recognizes that the queen was an “extraordinary woman” and that for the British she was “like a mother”, but that The monarchical institution is “idiocy”. The director also laughs about the news of the crown, and jokes that, not having Twitter, he is not as updated about everything that is happening around the figure of Kate Middleton.

The royals’ latest controversy would make for a movie, but the octogenarian director would not sign the script. Frear has never written the script for any of his works. “I was always fascinated that screenwriters could write what was in my head without me knowing it was in it,” he reflects. He further points out that he has only worked with “great writers”, with whom he has sometimes had successes and sometimes “failed”.

The British recognizes that I would “never” try to write a movie because it would be like “insulting the brilliant writers” with whom he has collaborated. “I can’t do what Almodóvar does,” he insists to clarify that he has always depended on other people. Frears goes further and emphasizes that he “is probably the opposite of an author,” although, laughing, he admits that this may have worked in his favor at many times.

“I can’t do what Almodóvar does”

Frears does not speak what he does not know or what he is not interested in. Hasn’t seen ‘Barbie’, which it left empty at the Oscarsand considers that Marvel movies are not cinema. Today’s films are not those of his childhood, when feature films were made in a way that is “over.” Frears remembers that he went to the cinema to see films about life, with ordinary stories, with interesting characters and actors, but he regrets that things have changed. “First the films about America were destroyed and now the European ones are beginning to be destroyed,” he points out, although he is quick to clarify that these are just the ideas of “an old man.”