The actress from Vitoria is inspired by Edurne Pasaban to embody a mountaineer with no desire to live in ‘The Top’, in theaters from this March 25: “The love of oneself is what will bring you closer to being happy”
Patricia López Arnáiz (Vitoria, 1981) acknowledges that she will never risk her life climbing a mountain, but she can understand the emptiness that a mountaineer feels after descending from the summit. Just a year ago, all the spotlights were on the winner of the Goya for best leading actress for ‘Ane’. However, the award hangover was not easy. ‘La Cumbre’, by Bilbao-born Ibon Cormenzana, returns to theaters from this March 25th to the actress from Alava, who has been inspired by Edurne Pasaban to compose an elite climber who, after completing 14 eight-thousanders, retires to a cabin at the base of the Annapurna to avoid facing real life. Her salvation will come from the hand of a first-time mountaineer (Javier Rey), willing to climb to the top of the most dangerous mountain on the planet.
-What did you find in the life of Edurne Pasabán to prepare her character?
-I began to investigate his figure and I found headlines that spoke of his problems. The idea we have of success in sports and art is highly manipulated. We look at the wins, at the spotlights, but we don’t know what happens to one when she goes back to her house. We only see her professional achievements. Success does not stop being the look of another, it is not a place where you recognize yourself. Self-love is what will bring you closer to being happy. Edurne gives the details in her autobiography, how there was a development of her activity in the mountains but not personally. When you live oblivious to the daily life of people who have their work from Monday to Friday, you neglect the intimate. When Edurne returned, she saw that her friends had formed a family while she had her energy focused on the mountain. She came back and was not in that place. She also recounts the relationship she had with a mountaineer that she had as a double life and that after climbing she would return to her house with her family. A very hard story.
-They spent account now that life is no longer risked because he has his son at home.
-Of course. She has lived an encounter with life. She happens to all of us. You get hooked on a profession in such a way that you stop attending to other parts of your life. Distributing energy is not easy. You find out when you hit cookies along the way. My character feels that the mountain has stolen everything from him. We work on the anger with the mountain and then the reconciliation, which comes when you don’t have such a sporty look and you focus on camaraderie. You make top from another site.
-Something has changed with mental health issues. Popular people begin to talk naturally about their problems, about depression, about going to therapy…
-It was a taboo. It is still judged, you say that you go to a therapist and they think that it is for someone who is very crazy. Therapy is a place of knowledge and you can turn to it in critical and non-critical situations. We don’t take care of ourselves. The market prevails and the image is taking a very powerful place in our identity. With social networks, we live by advertising ourselves. We are making it harder and harder to find a place to rest.
The pandemic has affected us all.
-Of course. I have worked on two projects with adolescent girls and I have seen first-hand the problems they are having since the pandemic: eating disorders, anxiolytics… I have the feeling that we are abandoning them a bit. We have been very critical of them, we do not empathize, even though we have been in their place. We have been cruel to the young.
Patricia Löpez Arnáiz and Javier Rey in ‘The top’.
-He lives in a town in Álava. Getting lost in nature is important to you.
-Yes, I feel lucky to be able to live where I do. She spent six years there, until then she was an urbanite from Vitoria. But I need my dose of city, huh? I really like walking around Vitoria on weekends, I need to see people.
-But he hasn’t felt like risking his life in the heights.
-No. Edurne says that it was a progression: you start going to the mountains with your friends, climbs and little by little you get hooked. I like nature, but I have never felt the impulse of the challenge. I prefer to stay quiet.
-How was the Goya hangover?
-It was not easy. He was coming off a pretty stressful time at work. I went from one place to another, filming, different cities, spending very little at home, personal issues that touched me a lot… The peaks of emotion of the awards you know are not healthy either. I was stretching it and the Goyas were the last milestone before I let myself fall. Then I spent a week lying on the couch. i cracked I had to land and reconnect with myself. I think my body’s organic processes are slower than what my head wants. Until the summer I did not feel well. Now I have started to work but I notice that I am in another place.
-I was very afraid of exposure as a result of the Goya, of feeling watched and losing privacy.
-And nothing has happened. It was a fear born of ignorance. She was low on energy and she felt that wariness. But I still have the same life as before, super discreet. I don’t feel watched.
-Not long ago, a mountain adventure movie would have starred a man.
-One of the things that attracted me to the project was to play a mountaineer. There is the hand of the screenwriter, Nerea Castro. Obstacles have to be removed so that there are women in all departments. The more female screenwriters and directors there are, the more cinema will earn.
Do you consider yourself at the top of your career?
-I guess the peak of your career is when you know you have to start descending. I’m not at the top. You can climb Gorbea, Aitzgorri or Annapurna. I’ll recognize her when I want to get out of that car
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