Global Focus
interest has always been with stories that
were related to my Uruguayan past. And
that’s why I think I was kind of reluctant
to direct my own stories in Brazil because
it’s difficult to be as a foreigner directing
things in that country that has received you.
Do you still feel like a foreigner living in
Brazil?
Oh yes, I’ll always be a foreigner. I think I’m
an inbetween. I’ll never be full Uruguayan but
I’ll never be a full Brazilian. It took me like
six years of psychoanalysis to understand,
but now I’m pretty satisfied with that!
What attracted you to this particular story?
The need of a dream. For these people dream
is like gasoline to keep them going. If they
“The Uruguayans in Uruguay are very pleased
couldn’t dream, they wouldn’t wake up and
go to work and go to battle a new day. We
with the film because it shows the problems
see how problematic our societies in South
America are because of the social difference,
that we have. We have to build a solid society
because of the very awful system that we
inherited from the colonial conquerors.
and institutions and not live only on dreams.”
And how do you go around breaking those
walls that separate us? Dreams. To dream to
succeed, to dream to get better, to dream of Carré’s book [The Constant Gardener], appear was those knickers, so it was the big
a better life, to dream of getting your naturally the images of Africa come to your colour opportunity of the film. And that was
daughter to school. mind and when he talks of Lake Turkana on purpose: very little colour was possible
he describes it in a way and you start seeing in those people’s lives. We wanted it to
It’s interesting that even though there’s a those colours. contrast with the colourful shops in Brazil.
lot of unfulfilled dreams, and in spite all of
the hardship, the story is full of humour. The colour scheme in El Baño del Papa is Yes, that contrast really worked. What about
We were conscious of that balance. I think somewhat restrained, almost desaturated, the actors?
humour is so important. We took inspiration compared to some of your earlier work, but I borrowed something from Fernando that
from neo-realistic Italian films and Italian then there’s one wonderful moment when I learned with him in City of God and
tragic comedies like Brutti, Sporchi e Beto brings home some red knickers for his that was mixing professional and non-
Cattivi (Ugly, Dirty and Bad). Films that wife and he shines a torch through them, professional actors. The acting coach did a
are very tragic and funny at the same time. and it’s such a shock because it’s so vivid beautiful job of blending the two styles
I think it’s a beautiful way of telling stories. and presents such a striking contrast to because it’s very difficult for an actor that
their lives. has been 30 years on top of a theatre stage
What was the thought process behind the It’s good that you mention it. We had to blend with a person of the street acting.
look of the film? discussed that the first time colour would We’re very proud of them.
It’s very difficult to speak about images:
you have to see them. It comes from
intuition. I knew that these people’s lives
were grey. Uruguay, because of its Spanish
influence, is pretty grey. So those characters
had to be a little bit grey, blue—subdued
colours. And the landscape, because of the
cold weather, had to be beautiful but a
little bit cold. So I think it’s what came
naturally from those places.
It felt as if it was always filmed early in the
morning.
It wasn’t. It’s just that the light in winter
all day has this early morning look. So every
story asks for its image and it doesn’t ask
for it in a written or rational way. You read
a script and instinctively images come to
Silvia (Virginia Ruiz)
your mind. So when I was reading John Le
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