'Party in the Burrow': a child's fantasy journey in the light of narco

Director Manolo Caro had sworn not to make a film that included three features.

The first, which will be framed in the atmosphere of drug trafficking.

Second.

He told himself that he was not going to work with children, because he felt they were “very big” when acting.

And third, he doesn't like working with animals.

Curiously,

Fiesta en la madriguera

(Anagrama, 2010), his new project—an adaptation of the work of Jalisco writer Juan Pablo Villalobos—has all three: Tochtli is a boy who likes hats, dictionaries, samurai, the guillotines and the French.

Now what he wants is a new animal for his private zoo, a Namibian dwarf hippopotamus.

It doesn't matter that it is an exotic animal in danger of extinction.

His father, Yolcaut, a drug trafficker at the top of power, is willing to fulfill his every whim.

Caro felt the concern of adapting a novel to materialize his return to cinema and Mexico.

He had not made a film or worked in his country for five years.

His friend told him that every time he revisited

Party at the Burrow

he had always believed that he had to be the one to bring this work to the big screen.

The also director of

Perfect Strangers

(2018) entered the work and began to free itself from its own precepts.

She realized that the vision of the story was through the eyes of a child and that took away the feeling and alarm generated by the industry's glorification of drug traffickers.

After many

castings,

Miguel Valverde appeared with a “carelessness, freedom and a freshness” that captivated the director.

There he knew that he had found his Tochtli and another conditioning was removed.

The play was full of animals, so he finally took it on as a challenge.

“I think life is a bitch.

It presents you with projects that just make you break down these barriers that you put up for yourself as you advance in this profession.

The challenge was very great, but the desire to make myself uncomfortable and to get to that place was even greater.

It was a very fun and very interesting filming,” says the director from the Netflix offices, on the 37th floor of the Reforma Tower, in Mexico City.

It is the second work by Villalobos that the big N company has brought to the cinema.

They previously adapted

I'm Not Going to Ask Anyone to Believe Me

, which was directed by Fernando Frías, who previously directed the acclaimed

I'm No Longer Here

(2019).

The writer, present in the conversation via video call from Barcelona, ​​where he has lived since 2003, was also involved in this new project together with Caro and Nicolás Giacobone, winner of the Oscar for Best Screenplay for

Birdman or (the unexpected virtue of ignorance)

(2014) with Alexander Dinelaris, Jr;

Armando Bó and the Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu.

“Manolo has this touch of the tragic and the comic.

He has this ability and this sensitivity to portray extreme situations of characters who are in extreme conditions in emotional and sentimental terms.

I think he fit very well with what happens in the novel and then it immediately seemed to me that he was the ideal person to make the adaptation,” says Villalobos.

Tochtli lives in a palace.

A burrow like his own zoo in which he lacks nothing, in which he lives with dozens of people, including thugs, prostitutes,

dealers

, servants and some corrupt politicians.

Giacabone, connected to the conversation virtually from Argentina, says that his first impressions of Villalobos' work were that it was an engaging and very visual reading, told through the voice of a child in the first person, a resource that It is “difficult to take to the cinema,” he admits.

“We had a coincidence and also an understanding [with Caro and Villalobos] of how adaptation works, which is basically absorbing, chewing the original work and digesting it and then starting to think about something, since even though they are adaptations, it is a work new, it is a film and it has to have its independence and sustain itself,” says the Argentine screenwriter.

The film, still without a confirmed release date, has in its cast Manuel García-Rulfo, in the role of Yolcaut - who was previously Tom Hanks' co-star in

A Grumpy Neighbor

-;

Daniel Giménez Cacho, Raúl Briones, Pierre Louis, as well as Teresa Ruiz and Debi Mazar, among other names.

The film, filmed in Guadalajara and Katima Mulilo, Namibia, was nourished by the Sinaloan origins of Caro's parents.

The music and culture of the northwest of the country were his materials, more than cinematographic creators, for the colors and images that make up

Fiesta en la burrow

.

From Netflix they agree that this new film marks an evolution in the cinematographic and narrative vision of the filmmaker, who previously knew how to reinvent soap operas with the success of

The House of Flowers

.

His inspiration and what he sought to convey to both Villalobos and Giacobone, as well as to his production team, had to do with music, with a region, with food, drug culture, but with a twist to not fall into the cliché.

“Ramón Ayala and his group Los Bravos del Norte were undoubtedly a great inspiration;

Carlos and José, the Sinaloa band that my parents listened to.

From there I began to make a musical selection and put together a

playlist

.

I started showing them where we wanted to see the movie.

With

Party in the Burrow

I feel like we achieved that magic that we were all telling the same story,” explains Caro, seated in a conference room named

The House of Flowers.

Villalobos says that he always imagined his work as a coming-of-age novel, in which the child will discover who his father is, but at the same time as a kind of children's story for adults.

I didn't see it as very realistic, due to the elements it plays with - a closed palace with exotic animals and a child who is dressed up all the time - however, the writing of the script required a monologue for each of the characters to win their depth and personality, which perhaps, he admits, are “much more schematic” in the book.

“Since the possibility of adaptation arose, it was very clear that I had to detach myself from the book.

The movie is a different thing.

I never wanted to defend the fidelity of the book to the film, because it has its own codes and also takes its own life.

The comparison has always seemed silly to me, when people start saying 'I like the movie better' or 'I like the book better'.

It's like comparing a song to a painting.

I'm happy.

You write a novel, which is a very solitary process, and suddenly you find yourself involved in a project that involves many people.

There has been a very pleasant element in the entire process because fortunately there has been a very good vibe in each of the steps,” Villalobos concludes.

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