Ramón Barea (Bilbao, 1949), with three children and five grandchildren, was a nomadic and show-biz father who often felt a sense of “debt and guilt” for not having been home more. Director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa (Barakaldo, 1978) has a six-year-old son and also “deals with guilt” when questioning herself as a mother. All of this is discussed in ‘Cinco lobitos’, her first film starring Barea, which swept the Malaga Festival and hits theaters on May 20.
The film tells the woes of a first-time, overwhelmed mother (Laia Costa), who leaves Madrid and returns to the town on the Basque coast where she grew up to live temporarily with her parents (Susi Sánchez and Ramón Barea). She must then take care of her baby, but also her parents. Actor and director chat in Bilbao about the benefits and miseries of motherhood and the weight of family inheritance, the other big theme of one of the Spanish films of the year.
–Have you ever thought about what kind of father and mother you have been?
–Ramon Barea: I have asked myself this question more than once. I got married very young and had my children very close together; now they are in their forties, they could almost be part of my family. My teenage love, who was the mother of my children, died after we separated. Suddenly, they were left completely orphaned, the father was far away and the mother disappeared. I was able to do theatre because my partner gave me that opportunity. I have a feeling of debt and guilt. You wonder what it should have been like and I’m not sure, because in every artistic activity there is a part of immolation.
–Alauda Ruiz de Azua: I am living this juggling act. You are always rethinking yourself as a father or mother, you never stop wondering if you could do things differently. The day to day eats you up and you are sorting out the week, the month… In the end, all fathers and mothers have to deal with guilt. I was listening to you, Ramón, and I thought that there are also absent fathers who work in offices, it does not necessarily happen in the artistic world. The complicated thing is the filming, which is very demanding. For it to be compatible with conciliation, money would be needed that is not feasible in an independent Spanish production.
–RB: I had the support of my grandmother and the local nursery. And I slept at home. My Madrid adventure was very late, I made my first film, ‘La fuga de Segovia’, when I was thirty. I have not subjected my children to a very radical separation either.
–ARA: In your time, you didn’t have these conversations about family models and conciliation. There was no talk of postpartum depression, many things were assumed to be natural.
–RB: You didn’t make plans, you lived on rent. Life was setting the course for you, I wasn’t able to stop and organize my life. It was like smoking: you smoked and that was it, only later you wondered why the hell you did it.
–ARA: You became a father at a very young age, and we have put it off for a long time. These days we are doing a lot of screenings and the public appreciates things like seeing a mother who is not comfortable breastfeeding or seeing the baby fall. That everyday thing.
“An archaic and sexist grandfather”
–Did you have it easier before?
– ARA: I don’t think so. We are reacting to the family models we have had.
–RB: I see it in the young company of Pavilion 6, the new generations are already born feminists, it seems normal to them. You are an archaic, sexist and authoritarian grandfather, who says nonsense. I was not born with those coordinates that I share, it is very difficult for me to get rid of all the generational errors that I drag along. I envy them, but it scares me when that vision of life is used as a weapon against previous generations.
–ARA: It is not so much a throwing weapon, but rather a rethinking of ourselves from now on. In the film there is compassion in the portrayal of the father. The mother says a phrase that many people identify with: “Your father has been a good father and a terrible husband.” It defines the profile of the man of a generation. He is not a villain, he simply has not had the tools or an emotional education that is not built overnight.
–The protagonists of the film could only be Basque.
–ARA: It’s funny, because the film has been seen in Berlin, Malaga, Barcelona… And many people have approached me to say: my mother is just like Begoña. Yes, there is a contained character, this northern thing, but I think it’s a universal dynamic.
“The public appreciates seeing a mother who is uncomfortable breastfeeding or who has dropped her baby.”
Alauda Ruiz de Azua
Director
“You can give them whatever lessons you want, but your children will inherit what they have seen you do.”
–’Cinco lobitos’ tells that one day we discover ourselves speaking like our father, even if we don’t like it.
–RB: Children inherit what they have seen you do, for better or worse. You can teach them whatever lessons you want, but what they see is what they stick with.
–ARA: When you are a parent, you realise how you affect someone, how you can influence them. You may have the fantasy that you are different from your parents, that you can escape from that. But there will come a time when you realise that you are like them. It is very difficult to escape from your family. Over time, you understand that when they told you to be strong, it was a sign of affection.
–Ramón, what advice have you given to Alauda?
–RB: I met a human being before I met a film director, someone with a sensitivity who spoke to me about family. The first meeting was like this conversation, we didn’t talk about cinema, but about life. I am very obedient and I tried to be an accomplice. Afterwards, when I saw the film, I discovered things that I wasn’t aware of when I was filming it. This film has a very special sensitivity.
–ARA: You were very generous from the beginning, Ramón. I learned from you how important it is to look at the characters with humanity and compassion. Try to understand them. And be open to things that happened during the shoot.
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