Pedro Almodóvar brought to Cannes a gay western without explicit sex: 'I want to show pleasure in another way'

Pedro Almodóvar does not change, whether he films a crazy love story, a comedy, a film noir, a drama or even a queer western, which is what he has done in Strange Way of Life, which has just been presented at Cannes.

"Cannes is the best place" to experience cinema, said the filmmaker from La Mancha to the crowd that filled the Sala Debussy, where the Rendez-vous avec Pedro Almodóvar took place, a meeting in which the medium-length film was screened followed by a series of questions and answers.

"Look at the beauties who are with me," said Pedro, pointing to Ethan Hawke and the four young men who accompanied him on the stage of the Debussy Hall, "they are very good actors, and they are very good in their roles."

He continued, "I especially want to thank Ethan, who has come from the United States. I had wanted to work with him for a long time, and I got it. We are now buddies. Thank you for coming on a rainy day," he told the audience, who would applaud every time the name Almodovar appeared on the screen.

"Now we are buddies," Pedro Almodovar said of his relationship with Ethan Hawke. Photo Reuters

Half an hour of cinema, with two bandits

Strange Way of Life is a medium-length film that lasts 30 minutes, starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, the actor who lately we see wielding weapons, either as The Mandalorian or in the series The Last of Us. Pedro, born in Chile and naturalized American, is Silva, who arrives on horseback to the town where the sheriff, Jake (Ethan Hawke) is not exactly waiting for him.

Their gazes meet. They've been bandits 25 years ago, together, and they've had a history in Mexico for at least two months. A story that for Silva has been one of love, but for Jake, maybe not so much.

Actors Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal during a frame of Pedro Almodóvar's new film.

From the sheriff's office they go to Jake's house. And from the dinner Jake prepares, they go to bed. Jake, with that green jacket, which we saw Almodóvar wear so many times at festivals, testifies that if there is a character inspired by the director of The Law of Desire, it is Silva.

Following the screening, the director and Ethan Hawke participated in a series of questions and answers. "I think success is about doing what everyone wants at all times. For me it was more interesting to make a short film than a feature film or a series. That is what success consists of, in being able to decide," began Pedro, who alternated the answers in Spanish with English.

Exultant were Pedro Almodóvar, the La Mancha-born director, and Ethan Hawke, the Texan actor. AFP Photo

"The last question that Pedro Pascal asks, and his answer, 'what could two men do together on a ranch': 'protect themselves', the most basic and human things, well in that paragraph, Silva answers the Heath Ledger of Secret in the mountain ...

"In everything else, the film is independent of other westerns, and also of the European western, the spaghetti western that began with Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, who totally changed the rules of the western....

"Mine is a classic western, the desire of two cowboys, which the genre had never shown. And that despite being an absolutely masculine gender, with women in secondary roles, but there was never talk of the desire of men, gender had not allowed it ... Even if they caught," he said, and when they translated it there were several laughs.

A sheriff with authority

"I knew Ethan (Hawke) had done westerns, and I was confident he could ride a horse," Pedro Almodovar joked.

"Ethan has all the characteristics to interpret the authority of a sheriff," he continued. On the other hand, he is a Texan, very American, but he is not the typical American actor, he goes wherever they call him, and that gave me confidence that I could call him...

"And in any case, I've admired him a lot as an actor. Throughout his career he proved to be versatile, and I had seen him in westerns, it gave me the assurance that he could ride a horse (laughs). And he can also be very cold, distant, secretive, qualities that are the opposite of the trilogy he did with (Richard) Linklater (the one from Before Dawn). I knew I could give that distance."

Hawke, who occasionally took a bite or two, told how Almodóvar contacted him. "I had an email with the script, and the invitation to participate in the film. So I felt very grateful. I grew up with westerns, which are for telling legends, and they are also often a metaphor. And to participate in a western that does not pretend to be old, when contemporary westerns imitate the old movies...

"And Almodóvar has an original voice in the camera, and in the way of telling. The acting is uniformly excellent. It's so much fun as an actor to put yourself in the hands of a director like him. You don't have to worry, just doing your job, it's very exciting. As a kid I worked with Peter Weir (in The Society of Dead Poets), who, like Peter, is a master...

"It's the most fun thing to work for a director I admire," Ethan Hawke said of Pedro Almodóvar.

"It's very relaxing that your job is to do your performance, which helps tell a story, and it's the most fun thing in the world to act for a filmmaker I admire."

Peter took the floor again. "It was my first western and I've done it like every other genre I've tackled, and I tried not to be anachronistic so that the Americans, who created it, wouldn't tell me there were errors in any of the images we showed...

"And it's a very abstract western, it didn't cross my mind... Let's see, I isolate these two characters in a very particular situation, which becomes another situation: it seemed that they came together to love each other, but no, each one had a second intention...

"Sometimes it's completely theatrical, halfway through when they wake up from the orgiastic night it's very theatrical, I did it based on the dialogues of the two. I decided not to show them physically naked, but their naked voices. What they say is far more shocking on sexuality than if they had shown explicit sex. I shot this western my way, I wasn't going to do a spaghetti western," the director said.

Red carpet. Almodóvar and company in Cannes. Reuters

"In many of my films there was explicit sex, but time passes and I get more lazy, and I want to show pleasure in a different way. In the dinner scene I wanted to hint that there was something about these two men, and thinking of classic cinema, the maximum nudity came to the fore. In the noir films I saw something more explicit than in the films of the '70s, where there were nudity ...

"At dinner, Silva's way of looking, who tries all the time to remember what happened 25 years ago, is the only argument he can argue for mercy – he is there for another reason. It is an almost feminine gesture of Jake, when he says "please, don't look at me like that". The other character plays, how do you want me to look at you? We see that they have had a relationship 25 years ago, the looks are full of sensuality, and the discussion is that of two lovers who react differently to a night of.

One in white, the other in black. Ethan Hawke and Pedro Almodóvar, on their way to the Sala Debussy. AFP Photo

"Jake if it were possible to say no, it hasn't happened, and the other reacts passionately, takes him to the relationship of the past, which is the last thing Jake wants to remember. These two facets were understood very well by the actors, in the two scenes in Jake's house," Almodóvar concluded.

Hawke wasn't wearing a cassette, but his answers didn't measure up to the ace of the director of All About My Mother.

"The whole experience of acting is acts of love, these people are important and the things they feel and think are important, and for me it's always about love, what we want, love, desire, makes the world go round, it's always what I do, I enjoy doing what I want with people like Pedro who are behind every detail, And it's very exciting to be seen as an actor. Every detail, every great director I worked with has an obsession with details."

And then they left together, like two buddies, two new friends from any Hollywood movie.

Special Envoy

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