Jaume Balagueró on the set of ‘Way Down’.
The director parks terror in ‘Way Down’, a robbery film that mixes British and Spanish actors set during the 2010 World Cup with which Telecinco Cinema wants to fill the theaters again
Jaume Balagueró (Lleida, 1968) has parked terror for a moment to take charge of Telecinco Cinema’s great bet for this season. As in any self-respecting robbery tape, in ‘Way Down’ – from this Friday, November 12 in theaters – the viewer wants the thieves to get away with it. The central headquarters of the Bank of Spain on Calle Alcalá is an impregnable building that in the popular imagination is associated with the most watched Spanish series in history, ‘La casa de papel’, with which ‘Way Down’ is condemned to be compared . Shot with the effectiveness and the means of any American production of its kind, the film by the author of ‘REC’ and ‘While You Sleep’ naturally mixes British and Spanish actors, but has a singularity that sets it apart from similar proposals: it takes place during the World Cup 2010. Same as ‘Fe de Etarras’, by the way.
Freddie Highmore, protagonist of ‘The Good Doctor’, is the university brainiac in search of strong emotions, recruited by an underwater treasure hunter company (like the one in ‘La Fortuna’, the Amenábar series) willing to get hold of some coins that would serve Key to Sir Francis Drake’s Treasure (the title originally intended, better than the bland and Anglophile ‘Way Down’). The blow will occur just when the country is absorbed in front of the television watching the final of Spain against the Netherlands. La Roja’s goal, Iniestazo, acquires an even more epic nuance in the film. Luis Tosar, Sam Riley, Liam Cunningham, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, José Coronado and Emilio Gutiérrez Caba complete the cast.
– Are you a football fan?
-Not much, a little more after making the movie. In my family no one has been a soccer fan, over the years I have gotten a little closer. One of the virtues of this story is the moment in which the thieves choose to enter the Bank of Spain, the only one where it is vulnerable, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of fans watching a game. That fascinated me.
Video.
Trailer for ‘Way Down’.
-In the ‘heist movies’ or robbery movies the viewer wants the thieves to get away with it.
-Of course. You always have to make the spectator identify with the one who is playing, not with the one defending the board. The meaning of ‘Way Down’ is that, to play and move the tiles with the protagonists. It was not about robbing a bank with weapons, but with intelligence. There is no violence in the movie.
– Is there a movie of the genre that fascinates you?
-In my head were the most recent: ‘Ocean’s Eleven’, ‘The Italian Job’ … And I am fascinated by one that is not strictly a ‘heist movie’, but has something of the genre: ‘Elevator for the scaffold’, by Louis Malle. They are titles that are in your heart and that move you without realizing it.
– How did the mixed British-Spanish casting come about? It is not usual in our cinema.
– It was not a later decision, it is given by history. They are Englishmen who come to recover what is theirs during the World Cup. It was a smart starting point for making an English-speaking movie, everything just comes naturally. They spoke in English, Spanish and Catalan on the set. Some of the actors learned Spanish and Catalan. Freddie Highmore speaks Spanish perfectly and ended up doing it in Catalan. Oh, and with Astrid Bergès-Frisbey I spoke in French. It is the sign of the times.
Freddie Highmore, Sam Riley and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey in ‘Way Down’.
– Technology is very important in the film.
-It seems very easy what the characters do, but that’s the way it is. A hacker at his home in Móstoles can get into the guts of the White House. That vulnerability in today’s world is reflected in the film. In computers, nothing is invulnerable.
– What was the most difficult part of shooting with so much action and so many locations?
– One of the great challenges was to rebuild the World Cup, that final in the Plaza de Cibeles. The Madrid City Council allowed us to cut traffic and drive for twelve hours with five units at the same time. Obviously we do not fill the streets with hundreds of thousands of people, there is a digital intervention to make it convincing. The other great difficulty was the invention and construction of all that underground world of the bank vault of the Bank of Spain. It’s not like that in real life, it’s something adventurous that I really like. This is still a story of current pirates.
– Have they filmed at the Bank of Spain?
–A scene in which the character of José Coronado enters a parking area in his car. They only allowed us to roll to that place, the rest we rebuilt by crossing Calle Alcalá, at the Instituto Cervantes.
Jaume Balagueró and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey.
–The human face of the Bank personifies it in the governor who Emilio Gutiérrez Caba embodies and in that implacable head of security that is José Coronado. It is the most Spanish part.
-Exactly. Those heated discussions that they have when one asks him not to have people in the square are very Spanish and the other responds that in this country soccer rules. They say, for better and for worse, that this is the way this country is.
–In the collective imagination we associate the Bank of Spain with ‘La casa de papel’.
– I received the proposal to direct ‘Way Down’ seven years ago, ‘La casa de papel’ did not exist. In the series, if you recall, the initial target was the Mint. When we were about to start shooting, the news suddenly reached us that there is a new season of the series set in the Bank of Spain. But the film has nothing to do with ‘La casa de papel’, they are different stories and the way of telling them is also different.
– Have you felt comfortable parking the horror genre, your favorite?
–It’s not my favorite genre, I love thousands of genres. I do not feel that I have committed a betrayal, a movie like this is part of my DNA as a spectator. I have grown up and enjoyed movies like this.
– And is there a satisfaction in carrying out a commission?
-Yes. ‘While you sleep’ was not a script by me either, but by Alberto Marini. When you say yes to a project it is because you fall in love with it, and then you make it yours. It’s as if you wrote it.
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