From the left, María Valverde, director Claudia Llosa and Dolores Fonzi. Diego Araya Corvalán / NETFLIX
Claudia Llosa (Lima, 44 years old) had not yet finished reading
Distance from Rescue,
the first novel by Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin - "I still had the last pages left" - and she felt that there was her new film. "I had never experienced that impulse, and I felt that I could visualize it, that despite the many challenges I would have to face, and the voices that were going to recommend that I not do it, something actually happened," he recalls. The Peruvian filmmaker, winner of the 2009 Berlinale and an Oscar candidate for
La teta scared,
makes the video interview from the Colombian jungle, where she is filming a series for Apple TV with “a lot of action”. From there he traveled directly to the San Sebastián festival, where his
Rescue Distance,
Produced by Netflix, it is the highlight of Monday, September 20, in the official contest.
On this platform it will premiere on October 13 and a week before in Spanish theaters.
More information
Claudia Llosa, surgeon of beliefs
Good times for the paranormal
Among the complications that Llosa faced along the way was that the story is told by a voice-
over
in the book
.
“Mind you, I loved that problem. Because with it a tension is generated, layers are formed in the discourse, already complex in itself, because the story seems like a game of Chinese boxes, with a story within a story within a story, which hypnotized me. However, I saw it and did not hesitate much ”, points out Llosa, who returns to Castilian after his international commitment with
No llores, vuela
(2014). In
rescue distance
Two mothers cross with their children, tied in different ways, by fatalities in life, with them: that thread is the rescue distance, the physical — or philosophical — distance that can be assumed from afar to save a child in the event of an accident.
One of the two women feels that this thread has already been broken, and the most abominable terrors inhabit her interior as an echo every time she sees her son.
The other has not yet taken the wrong step.
Llosa points out: “I had to be very precise with the information while creating the sensations, and that's why I co-wrote the script with Samanta.
You had to build a watch, but make it feel organic. "
Dolores Fonzi, in 'Rescue Distance'.
On video, the trailer for the film EPV
For the mother who is traveling back, who inhabits a hell that is not understandable by the rest, the filmmaker called the Argentine Dolores Fonzi. For the young woman who appears again, who is devastated by the emotional avalanche that submerges her in a small town, he chose María Valverde from Madrid. Fonzi remembers, from her home in Buenos Aires: “The best thing that can happen to me as an actress happened to me, and that is that I read the book, which amazed me, by a writer who fascinates me, who is from my country and my age, and at the time they called me to star in it in movies. It was the ultimate gift ”. The Argentine remembers that after accepting the challenge she waited for them to find her traveling companion. María Valverde responds from Madrid. “We shot in January, after immersing ourselves in this complex universe, in a confidence leap between the three of us. Luckily, Claudia is very smart,Intellectually and emotionally, and when you feel it and know it, it's for something. You just have to follow their guide ”.
Fonzi: “It is a film co-written by two women, based on the book of one of them and directed by the other, and with two powerful female characters.
You have to take advantage of the moment and the spaces that are open to women "
For María Valverde, "the exchange of the energies that move between the story and the characters makes the viewer always feel affected by the experience."
And she confesses: “As an actress, I felt that the novel tries to play with the reader, on whether what is told is true or not, on what facts are true or imagined, and I decided that like my character I would not judge, I would follow my instincts .
It is an open letter to the public ”.
Fonzi lost ten kilos, concentrated on a 50-day shoot in which they only rested on Sundays, as if he were “an elite athlete”.
"It has been a sublime experience, because being enclosed the reality of everyday life did not interfere in the process," he says.
Argentina was attracted by the palette of themes such as “motherhood, pesticides, the destruction we are doing to Mother Earth;
combined in a very important film for the time in which we live ”.
For a moment and add: “Let me point out that it is a film co-written by two women, based on the book of one of them and directed by the other, and with two powerful female characters.
We cook a product in our sauce.
You have to take advantage of the moment and the spaces that are open to women ”.
Politically incorrect fears
The three delve into a capital theme
of Rescue Distance,
motherhood, a subject that has fed a good handful of horror titles in recent years. "It's funny, I'm interested in touching it, although I never wanted to settle anywhere. Actually, the idea of fear of everyday life attracts me, and when that is projected to another place I personally disconnect ”, reflects Llosa. "Because if you stay in the everyday, you touch all the spectators." And motherhood? "Oh! The fear of loss. That grips us mothers. Interestingly, we know that the construction of a child's identity is done with independence. And yet ... There are even politically incorrect fears, such as when your newborn is delivered to you and you doubt whether you will love him or not ”.
Another issue that traps Llosa about motherhood is the symbolism it carries, a brutal anvil that grips women, "against, for example, abortion laws." And he continues: "That symbolism is the field to break to improve human relations."
A disturbing game looms
between the layers of
Rescue Distance
: Are the kids really sick? And if it is not a hallucination, is it due to poisoning caused by industrial insecticides or by an evil spirit? Is it an earthly evil, mystical or pure imagination? “From the beginning we played in the field of reality, although everything is possible, and we never deny the other possibility. There is nothing that cannot happen. Not only does poisoning attack children, it is also the same fear that intoxicates mothers ”, explains the director. “And this reflection marked the entire narrative and filmic journey. It was our compass in the creative process ”. So finally the filmmaker already knows where she made the film from: ”We are always brushing, caressing, before entering the cracks. Anyway, yes, I work from the edge ”.