One bought rice. Another, a bottle of oil. Maybe someone took cookies. Nothing transcendental. Neither, a priorivery artistic. Just the usual stuff in a grocery store. However, while helping his parents run the business, little Asghar Farhadi watched the customers and fantasized. Their carts, their appearance or character. “I imagined what life would be like in their homes. For me it meant getting to know society. And that experience may have been what pushed me towards cinema,” the Iranian recalled. It is said that the ways of the Lord are inscrutable. But those of the seventh art, many times, are too. It was difficult to foresee that the boy would end up as a director. But, even more so, that one day he would film a movie, Everyone knows it, 6,200 kilometres from his native Khomeyni Shahr. And in a language he didn’t know.
To the fate of Isabel Coixet, a prioriTokyo was also quite far away for him. Specifically, he had to travel the almost 14,000 kilometers from Sant Adrià de Bèsos to narrate the Map of sounds from the Japanese capital. Just as an ocean —and many worlds— separated the working-class Livorno where Paolo Virzì grew up from the historic US Route 1 highway along which he launched Ella and John in The trip of their lives. Something similar to the leap that Pedro Almodóvar has just made: from the La Mancha Calzada de Calatrava to the tireless New York, where he has filmed The room next door. His first feature film in English will debut on September 2 at the Venice Film Festival and will be released in theaters on October 18. It will show how the most famous director of Spanish cinema has solved a challenge that more and more creators and performers face in a hyper-globalized planet: filming in another language. And, at the same time, narrating a foreign country and idiosyncrasy.
The challenge attracts, intrigues. It can also provide greater market opportunities, as has been experienced by the English-language films of Luca Guadagnino, or those of directors specializing in horror and fantasy such as the French Alexandre Aja and Jean-François Richet, or the Spanish Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. Or Spanish filmmakers who have sought to expand their stories into other territories, such as Juan Antonio Bayona and Alejandro Amenábar. And, at the same time, it can cause a certain vertigo. “But I like that, it forces you to leave your comfort zone and do your best,” says Aida Folch, whose English can be heard from today in theaters in Lost Islandby Fernando Trueba. American Clint Eastwood emerged unscathed from the double jeopardy of Letters from Iwo Jima: to tell the story of the clash between his country and Japan during World War II from a Japanese perspective and in the Japanese language. However, when he asked Paul Haggis to write the film, he felt that he needed the collaboration of Japanese-American author Iris Yamashita. The film received four Oscar nominations, including the screenplay. But the most important recognition was another: its success in Japanese cinemas.
It may be normal, in an era where everyone travels, tourism collapses and international couples multiply. Although critical magnifying glasses are also fired: natives from any place can’t wait to find fault with the foreign gaze. Perhaps the least celebrated film by the Japanese Hirokazu Kore-eda in the last decade is The truththe only one he shot in France, in the local language, which he did not speak. To talk to Catherine Deneuve or Juliette Binoche on the set he needed an interpreter.
Virzì, the acclaimed narrator of the Italian soul, was showered with some of the harshest criticism of his career for his film in the USA. Among others, he criticized him for having a superficial vision. Woody Allen has already been criticized for this in Paris, Rome, Barcelona and San Sebastian. To which he always replied that he never intended to make a sociological treatise, but a film. And, of course, from his perspective as a visitor.
“Language is important, but it is not the first or only element for relating. There are other elements within you to understand others and to be understood. In the eyes, the body, the hands, you may be able to pick up something that you would not even guess from what someone is saying. Sometimes, language even confuses: I was watching Stories from Tokyo with Japanese students. And one student asked me: ‘If what she is saying right now is not so emotional, why does it impact you so much?’ Farhadi mused. Still, it is said that Dutchman Paul Verhoeven, a regular in American cinema, learned French before directing Isabelle Huppert in She. And Almodóvar himself abandoned the adaptation of Manual for cleaning women, by Lucia Berlin: “I don’t consider myself ready to tackle such a monumental production in English.”
Farhadi spent almost two years in Spain before filming his feature film in the Madrid town of Torrelaguna. He has also travelled frequently throughout Spain. And to Everyone knows it He tested “practically all the actors in the country” and “learned all the dialogue phonetically,” as Álvaro Longoria, the film’s producer, recounted. Far from generating skepticism, the Iranian genius’ approach to Spain attracted the biggest stars of local cinema. And there is a cast that includes Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Bárbara Lennie, Inma Cuesta and Eduard Fernández.
“Asghar spoke English to the actors he could communicate with in English, but when he wanted to be more precise, he did so in Farsi. He really liked to talk about things in life, about Spain. He is restless, he reads a lot and we talked about the script, but more about life in general. What I have learned from good directors, like Asghar, is that they are very specific,” Fernández shares. Between his talent, his own knowledge and his great actors, the filmmaker felt confident enough to delve into Spanish: he launched himself into filming a wedding, flamenco dances or the gossip of a village.
Dare
Coixet has never lacked daring either. She switched to English for her second film, Things I never told you. She has had actors such as Ben Kingsley, Sarah Polley, Juliette Binoche and Gabriel Byrne under her command. In her films, Portuguese, German, Japanese and even Inuktikut have been spoken. And she answers the phone from France, where she is preparing her next series, in that language, in which she once again counts on another foreign star, Tim Robbins. Later, she will go to Rome to adapt a novel by the late Michela Murgia to film, of course in the Italian in which it was written. “I have made films in languages that made sense. It has always come about in a natural way, the world is wide and foreign. I try to go without barriers, if you order a potato omelette in Tokyo, you are in trouble. In any case, the mechanisms for making a film are in some way the same in Japan, Canada, Venezuela, Chad or Uzbekistan. There is a filming structure no matter what language you speak,” says Coixet.
But in acting, something does change. And the work increases. “In some ways there is a barrier of understanding, I felt more emotionally distant. I was less precise in terms of intonations. The good thing is that it makes you more attentive, more present. It is more difficult to achieve authenticity. That is why I do exhaustive prior work before getting to the stage.” set “I can’t stop filming and forget about academics,” says Aida Folch. The actress describes her English as “intermediate.” That’s why, before the film, she rehearsed it thoroughly with her teacher, Nieves Lázaro. So much so that, she confesses, Trueba even feared that she had gone too far and her sentences would end up too “mechanized.” Coixet, on the other hand, is thinking of asking an Italian friend for more informal classes: to speak to her only in that language and refresh her memory before the next shoot. The filmmaker also recommends another method, laughing: “I had boyfriends from several countries and that helps.”
“To play a role in another language you have to know it to know the accents, the musicality, the intention of the word… And that takes time, a lot of time,” adds Eduard Fernández. Especially for a leading role, as Penélope Cruz also knows. Although so much effort to Don’t move, In 2004, she was awarded the David Award, the Italian Goya, for best leading actress. Since then, the actress has returned to the same language in To Rome with love, L’immensità either Ferrari. Although, in Michael Mann’s film, it was splashed by the opposite debate: why use English above all for a film? a priori Italian. “He speaks with a Spanish accent trying to be Romagnan [de la Emilia Romaña]an exorcist type with several voices inside him,” attacked the actor, producer and professional polemicist Luca Barbareschi. A criticism similar to that suffered by Loving Pablothe portrait of Escobar filmed by Fernando León de Aranoa, with Cruz and Bardem, halfway between English and Spanish.
Surely, in the history of cinema, many more films and languages have been discussed. After all, there are 7,164 in use in the world, according to the Etnhologue website, which is dedicated to cataloging them. For Folch, one could add one more: “Yes, I believe that there is a kind of universal language in art. I have felt it when, for example, I worked on a German film and I understood the director perfectly. There was something, an innate communication in knowing what you are doing.” Farhadi had a similar vision: “There are people whose eyes you can read many stories, even ones that they have never told. That is what attracts me the most.” It is about looking at the eyes. On the outskirts of Tokyo. In a grocery store in Iran. Or in the town of Torrelaguna.
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