The scene repeats itself every day. A young couple, she in her thirties and he in his forties, have decided to divorce and are going to fight before a judge in Mexico City for the custody of their daughter. But first they must answer the questions of a couple of bureaucrats who will help the justice to make the decision. "Have you suffered domestic violence?" Is perhaps the most sensible. "How many sexual partners have you had?", The most invasive. "What is the name of your daughter's teacher?", The most tricky. "Go to the next desk, please" is how the bureaucrats are coldly ending an institutional relationship that was once called love. With this bureaucratization, a new Netflix series begins on August 20, directed by Diego Luna, and titled with the phrase that is repeated to children when their parents have decided to separate:
Everything is going to be fine
.
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However, things are pretty bad. "I want a fucking divorce, you idiot," is how Julia (Lucía Uribe) asks Ruy (Flavio Medina) to please close the contract. "Love had absolutely nothing to do with marriage," says a little cartoon in the first chapter of the series that will set the tone for the story. Marriage is more "a purchase contract to secure your ownership over the womb of a particular woman." Somewhere in modern history what is called romantic love was added to the contract, but in the 21st century love has been liberated in every possible way, and the state has not kept pace with new forms of family. Around Julia and Ruy, however, there are loving families of three women, or heterosexual couples that only see each other every 15 days. "Everything will be fine",he promises a lesbian woman to Ruy, when the poor man does not understand when his ideal of love is over.
In this new series Diego Luna tries to see how the traditional contract can be broken in a less traumatic way. A Mexican version of
Marriage Story
(2019) or
Kramer v Kramer
(1979), which focus on the painful process of fighting a custody, but with much more humor than the North American versions. "There is no recipe for a good marriage," Julia says at one point at a family event. "But if they find it, pass it on to my dad, who has already had three."
Diego Luna has been a producer or actor of more than 90 films or series, but director of less than 10 films.
With
Everything will be fine,
Luna directs a very intimate world, and although the series is not autobiographical, it is a stage of life that he also had to live at a time as a divorced father.
"This is a reflection that comes thanks to the fact that I already went through this," he says.
"I'm already somewhere else, and that's why I can tell this story like this, that's why I can generate the necessary distance to tell it."
EL PAÍS interviewed him.
Question.
Where does the inspiration for this series come from?
Answer.
The first was to reflect on modern relationships, on the expectations that we place on family relationships and on the love relationships that we have, and that are marking us in life. Reality is forcing us to rethink how we relate to men and women, and is inviting us to reflect on how we educate our children. I am a dad and that also constantly moves me. How do we navigate this world that cries out for so much change? A world that cries out to reflect and shake off certain structures that were a scaffolding that clearly does not respond to the reality with which we interact every day.
Another thing that was important to me was making a series that I would like to see.
To think of the public as an extension of myself: what series I would like to see happen in my country, in the city where I live, and that they reflect on the generation to which I belong.
That was important to me and almost a question that I asked myself every day.
Also try to do comedy, do comedy that would make me laugh.
That he does not live in the auction and in the gag, but lives in the situation, and how a very realistic situation in the eyes of the spectator can be humorous.
Q.
Is the film inspired by a specific case or research on how divorce processes go in Mexico?
A.
No, it does not speak of a particular case.
One of the questions we wanted to reflect on is what does it mean, beyond marriage, to create a family?
Where is the freedom we have to define how we want our family to function?
Because clearly the imposed models do not finish working for many and for many.
So there was a constant question: when do we invite the State to play here?
At what point do we institutionalize something as pure as love?
Q.
In a country like Mexico, which has a traditional family model, it is said that it is in crisis.
What is the message of the series in the face of the supposed crisis?
R.
Well, yes, it is up to us to redesign that concept, so that it meets the needs of our relationships today. Everyone should do this exercise before embarking on the journey of creating their own, their own. I think that is essential, it is the act of responsibility that the creation of a family deserves, questioning how it is going to work and how you are going to be present, always present. Because that's, for me, rule number one: I wouldn't have a family if I didn't want to be always present. That is why I say that they are fundamental relationships, because they are the ones that go with life itself. Until he has my father, he will be my father. Until my children have me, I will be their father. And I share that responsibility with his mother, and I will always share it. So when we make those decisions, I think it's fair to say to ourselves:Why don't we rethink our models to make sure they meet our needs as a family?
Trailer of the series 'Everything will be fine' PHOTO |
VIDEO: NETFLIX
P.
Ruy's character is very complex: a 'male-liberal' with his own sexual harassment scandal, which one wants to hate, but he is also a bit lost and it is a pity.
R.
Yes, I think that is just the reflection with that character, but also with all the characters. They are all imperfect. It is impossible to truly represent a character if they do not have these contradictions. For me, what redeems Ruy's character is the desire he has to change. Although that process takes a while to rethink things, to deeply question their actions, where do certain behaviors that we have normalized come from. Change is very scary. Proposing a change is sometimes very scary because the introspection process can be very painful, and very revealing. But it is essential that we do so if we want to rethink things. And if we want to have healthier and fairer relationships in every sense, and more horizontal. We have to question things.The theme of machismo and a patriarchal structure is obviously everywhere, and we reflect on that in a very intimate way, which is the journey of this character who does not even see it coming and does not quite understand it.
For me it is very important not to put a moral stamp on our characters.
That gets used a lot, that the protagonist and the protagonist have to be faultless.
And you say 'well, will your story be very real?
Because then it won't look like the audience that's looking at you. '
Just the other way around, let's talk about those contradictions and those dilemmas that we enter, and the possibility that we have to transform ourselves.
That is the only thing that redeems us, that can redeem us.
Q.
Why is the title
Everything going to be okay
?
The idea was to tell the public that if the nuclear family is falling as a model, 'calm down because everything is going to be fine'?
A.
Well, yes, because we are going to end up turning it around, because we need to be able to love each other, because we need to be able to connect with the other, because we are going to continue building families. Because there is no purer and more brutally total love than the love one can feel for a son or a daughter. And we are not going to stop feeling it. We are going to turn it around. We are turning it around. And it's proving painful, and it's proving humbling. But something beautiful can only be born from this, I believe, if we do it with conviction. So yes, in the end everything will be fine. Because we are going to continue here, and we are going to end up understanding each other. There is no conflict that cannot be solved if there is, at both poles, the need to coexist. We will continue to coexist. Point. So as long as that is viable, there is hope.
And then, well, the title comes at a time where I've heard 'everything is going to be fine' more times in this last year and a half than in the rest of my life.
In the face of uncertainty, this desire is born to remind us that inadvertently, everything will be fine, that we will eventually find calm.
We will touch the ground, we will be again feeling that we are there.
Q.
What was it like directing this series in the middle of the pandemic?
A.
For me directing is perhaps what I enjoy the most today, but I can't do it unless I really focus on 100%. I can't do it while doing something else. Acting and directing contradict each other for me, because different parts of my brain work. What the pandemic brought me was the ability to focus. Suddenly my whole life stopped, suddenly my industry stopped, suddenly we became confined and understood the value of staying home. It became a time that it was an opportunity for me to finish running this.
And I talked to the team and said 'well I think this is the ideal moment, even though it seems that everything is against us'. It was very interesting. It can be done without putting anyone at risk and we will achieve it. We are going to achieve it because our industry has stopped and because the team had not worked for months, neither in this nor in anything, and the reality of each and everyone was beginning to be very worrying. Everyone from their perspective began to feel this inability to do what you like, and that gives meaning to your professional development and your desire to tell.
On a large scale, I believe that what this pandemic has made us is to be a little more aware of the other, to understand each other in relation to others.
I believe that never as a team have we been so aware of the responsibilities of others.
Nor had we understood the enormous capacity we have to do our job well and also help others to do it in the best way.
It made us rethink what the fundamental positions were in a set.
What do we need?
What is essential?
What have we been carrying that was not necessary?
It made us rethink our work methodology and take care of each other, because we had to get to the end without having cases of covid that would make us stop.
Q.
Is the personal life of the team also reflected in this series?
A.
Yes, but no more than on other occasions, our process is always like that.
When you tell a story it is impossible not to see it and not understand it in relation to your own.
When I work I always look for that and I look for it with the team as well, for me it is very important.
It is the moment in which you appropriate the story, the moment in which your point of view is important and makes your work only you can do.
Then it is indispensable.
There is not a single person who would have stood on that set who did not have a love story to tell.
Q.
Or divorce stories ...
R.
It is that those are also love stories.
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