Almodovar opens Venezia 78: “My imperfect mothers deal with history”

(Adnkronos / Cinematografo.it) “What will be the reaction of the ultra-right? I prefer not to think about it, they react to everything in a delirious way, I imagine their reaction, but I preferred not to think about it: not because you refuse the battle, but they and I are doomed not to understand each other. In Spain there is a difficult situation, a party that says things that have never been said, unconstitutional and illegal, the politicians are vulgar, of a low level ”. Pedro Almodóvar opens the 78th Venice Film Festival with the female drama ‘Madres paralelas’, in Competition, returning to the Lido after the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 and last year’s short The Human Voice. Starring Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Julieta Serrano and Rossy De Palma, the film, from 28 October in theaters with Warner Bros, is about history and memory, or rather the disappeared, victims of the Phalangists during the civil war and buried in mass graves: “Historical memory is a pending issue in Spanish society. There is a huge moral debt towards the disappeared. An argument – explains the director – that is always very important to me: the law on Zapatero’s historical memory of 2007 is incomplete, the few exhumations were due to private initiatives “. Almodóvar continues,” now it is the generation of grandchildren that asks for those bodies, and how a generation born in democracy could find itself in this situation is inconceivable. In my house there was never any talk of war, the trauma was widespread throughout society: in 1978 the problem had to be faced, not having done so makes the law on amnesty imperfect. It has not allowed us to move forward, the democratic process is suspended “. Almodóvar also contemplates the poet Federico García Lorca,” our most illustrious desaparecidos, an inspiration for me already in the seventies. This also demonstrates the bad relationship between Spain and its more recent history: it is also difficult to make films about it, for example about Eta. ”In the film, explicit reference is made to the former president of the Spanish government Mariano Rajoy, or zero euro that he destined to historical memory: “A brutal sentence, the climax for a president of the government, an insult in every sense: this is one of the advantages of cinema, showing the link between Rajoy and these ignoble words”. Coming to its protagonists, Almodóvar he says that “today I am much more interested in imperfect mothers, with more complex problems to solve: the more complex the character of Penelope was, the more I was interested”. For Cruz, who returns to work with Pedro for the fifth time, it is “a very intense journey, a gift, another marvel. A difficult character, perhaps the most difficult of my career, but I was not alone: ​​I worked with Pedro for months, difficult to find another director like that. Pedro is as if he were a craftsman, he takes care of the details, he has a rhythm of work that comes from ethics: he brings out the truth. ”The actress, who we will find competing at the Lido in Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s Competencia oficial, then reveals how the collaboration with Almodóvar works: “I am very grateful to Pedro, if he thinks it is suitable for a role he calls me, and for me it is a great happiness. He is the reason why I became an actress at sixteen when I saw Legami !, my hope was to work with him, and two years later he called me for Kika. He is always ready to support me on the set, he is there for us, which is little seen today among directors “. Pedro concludes,” Penélope waits and hopes to be the first recipient of my roles, I admire her very much, we speak the same language . This is the most complex role I’ve written for her ”.