The director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa talks with the actor Ramón Barea about ‘Cinco lobitos’, her debut film about motherhood that swept the Malaga Festival
Ramón Barea (Bilbao, 1949), three children and five grandchildren, was a showbiz and nomadic father, who has often experienced the feeling of “debt and guilt” for not having been home anymore. Director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa (Barakaldo, 1978) has a six-year-old boy and she also “deals with guilt” by questioning herself as a mother. ‘Cinco lobitos’ talks about all this, her debut feature starring Barea, which
swept the Malaga Festival and hits theaters May 20.
The film narrates the misfortunes of a new and outdated mother (Laia Costa), who leaves Madrid and returns to the town on the Basque coast where she grew up to temporarily live with her parents (Susi Sánchez and Ramón Barea). She must then take care of her baby, but also of her parents. Actor and director talk in Bilbao about the benefits and miseries of motherhood and the weight of family inheritance, the other great theme of one of the Spanish films of the year.
–Have you ever thought about what kind of father and mother they have been?
–Ramon Barea: I’ve made that thought more than once. I got married very young and had my children very often; now they are in their forties, they could almost be from my gang. My teenage love, who was the mother of my children, died after we separated. Suddenly, they were completely orphaned, the father was far away and the mother disappeared. I was able to do theater because my partner gave me that opportunity. I have a feeling of debt and guilt. You wonder how it should have been and I’m not sure, because in all artistic activity there is a part of immolation.
–Alauda Ruiz de Azúa: I’m living this juggling thing. You are always rethinking yourself as a father or as a mother, you never stop questioning if you could do things differently. The day to day eats you up and you solve 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 doesn’t necessarily happen in the artistic world. The complicated part is the filming, which is very absorbing. For them to be compatible with the conciliation, money would be needed that is not feasible in an independent Spanish production.
–RB: I had the support of my grandmother and the neighborhood nursery. And I slept at home, my adventure in Madrid is very late, my first film, ‘La fuga de Segovia’, I made when I was thirty years old. Nor have I subjected my children to a very radical separation.
–ARA: In your time you did not have these conversations about family models and conciliation. There was no talk of postpartum depression, many things were assumed as something natural.
–RB: You did not make provisions, you lived for rent. Life was marking the way for you, I was not able to stop to organize my life. It was like smoking: you smoked and that’s it, only later you wonder why the hell you did it.
–ARA: You were a very young father, we have delayed it a lot. These days we are making many projections and the public appreciates things like seeing a mother who is not comfortable breastfeeding or that the baby drops. That everyday.
«An archaic and macho grandfather»
– Was it easier before?
– ARA: I don `t believe. 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 born feminists, it seems normal to them. You are an archaic, macho 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. I envy them, but it scares me when that vision of life is used as a throwing weapon against previous generations.
Laia Costa, Mikel Bustamante and Ramón Barea in ‘Five Little Wolves’.
–ARA: It is not so much a throwing weapon, but to rethink ourselves from now on. In the film there is compassion in the portrayal of the father. The mother says a phrase with which many people identify: “Your father has been a good father and a lousy 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 tell me: my mother is just like Begoña. Yes, there is a contained character, the thing is from the north, but I think it is a universal dynamic.
«The public appreciates seeing a mother who is not comfortable breastfeeding or that the baby drops»
alauda ruiz de azúa
Director
«Now you can give them the lessons you want so that the children inherit what they have seen you do»
–’Five Little Wolves’ tells how one day we found ourselves talking like our father, even though we don’t like it.
–RB: Children inherit what they have seen you do, for better or worse. Now you can give them the lessons you want, that what they see is what they have left.
–ARA: When you are a father or mother you realize how affectively you mark a person, how it can condition them. You can have the fantasy that you are different from your parents, that you can escape from that. But the time will come when you will realize that you look like them. It is very difficult to escape from the 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 Alauda?
–RB: I met a human being rather than a film director, someone with a sensitivity that spoke to me about family. The first meeting was similar to this conversation, we don’t talk about cinema, but about life. I am very obedient and tried to be an accomplice. Later, when I saw the movie I discovered things that I was not aware of when I was shooting it. This film has a very special sensitivity.
–ARA: You were very generous from the beginning, Ramón. I have 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 on the set.
#parents #deal #guilt