“Life gives you surprises, like going back to the movies,” she tells us happily elena romero about her return to the big screen in Reinas sin corona, a film of Gino Tassara which she points out “we should all see it”.
This 2023, in addition to marking his return to the cinema and studying two important offers (one of them to sing and animate), represents the celebration of Maruja’s 40 years in hell, the film by Pancho Lombardi that marked her debut as an actress and to whose casting he went without expectations, back in 1983.
At the cinema. Romero returned to the big screen. Photo: diffusion
“I was looking for a job as an extra to earn a single. I went without fear or expectation. They told me to come back and I continued without expectations, that is, it seems incredible, but when you don’t have expectations you are very natural and you do everything like a game. When they gave me the character, I reacted very calmly, I didn’t explode. Lombardi told me: ‘You are not happy’. I said ‘yes’. But I didn’t believe it. Because for me the protagonist was like someone from Hollywood and she didn’t see myself, ”she says.
Romero points out that by then she was consuming a lot of European cinema.
“And although I had never been in front of a camera, I think intuitively one learns when you see. And I think Lombardi picked up on certain things and he knew how to guide me very well, and then I felt in harmony with that character. He understood it. Maruja’s feeling of floating, not feeling anywhere, I felt a bit like that. I was born here and went to Spain and came back when I was 12, and it was like the feeling that you are neither from here nor from there. And I think that was a character trait, she lived in that world like a flower inside the swamp all dark, innocent but not stupid.
—At the beginning of the film, one of the characters says: Lima is full of crazy people. How current is that phrase still?
—Yes, now the world is worse because what we live in is crazy.
What things do you think have changed?
—Informality is at the top, exploitation in some way too. Yes, things have changed, but there are others that we have to change, that we have to improve.
Scene from Lombardi’s tape. Photo: diffusion
—Maruja… it’s timeless.
-Yes of course. I think it’s a very good script, like the direction, and I don’t know, it has things that could be seen today, which is sad. It is a heroic film, because when we made it you couldn’t even see your scenes on camera, it was another system. And you didn’t know how they turned out. It was the eye of the director, the director of photography and that’s it. You can imagine the fear, the stress, but there I discovered, rather, I confirmed my passion for acting.
—And what will your character be in Reinas sin corona?
—It’s the neighbor who witnesses things… I can’t say more. The film seems very necessary to me, it is an open wound and we have to heal and one of the ways to heal is to speak and make it visible, so that mistreatment of women is not normalized. Gino (the director) is a perfectionist, a super worker who carries out his projects with great care. I am very glad to have met him.
#Elena #Romero #Maruja #hell #timeless
