Robe of Gems is one of the favorites for the Golden Bear of this 72nd edition of the Berlinale. And if you feel taken by the throat, even physically affected by the cinema of Natalia Lopez Gallardo, it’s no coincidence: ” I consider cinema to be an experience “says the Mexican director.
In the running for the Golden Bear, Robe of Gems could be translated as: “A dress of jewels”. A poetic and idyllic title which nevertheless hides a rare violence and cruelty. Natalia Lopez Gallardo, 42, is already appearing in her first feature film as a master of suspense. And for good reason: she has in the past worked with the greatest Mexican filmmakers, as on Heliof Amat Escalante, or Post Tenebras Lux, by Carlos Reygadas. In her own film, Natalia Lopez Gallardo tells the story of three women marked by a violence that is as intangible and mysterious as it is omnipresent, crossing all layers of Mexican society.
RFI : Each time when a Mexican film is selected in a big festival like Cannes, Venice or today in Berlin, one has the feeling that the spectator is entitled to a history of incredible violence. Is Mexican cinema viscerally linked to the phenomenon of violence ?
Natalia Lopez Gallardo : I think every country has its reality and its society, and it has its own problems, its own darkness and its own light. In German films, we may talk a lot about loneliness… In Mexico, we express this violence because it is a tragedy that has lived with us for so many years. This is why all the people who create in Mexico feel affected by the violence to some degree.
The ways of describing or approaching the problem are very different, but the problem is so deep and the affect is very big, although I think we have to talk about it. It’s not because there is a “tradition” of violence in Mexico, no, it’s because something is happening deep in society, to the point that we have it in us.
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In Robe of Gems, the viewer has the feeling of knowing everything about this family, even if you give very little concrete information about its members. Everything goes through the atmospheres and encounters around this family. The main protagonist of the film, is it the family or rather the country ?
I wanted to make a film about a small universe. I can only talk about the social context through experiences of violence that I have known in my life. And I lived in rural Mexico. So I can speak through that experience. Then, I wanted to build a kind of group, to create a configuration where we talk about certain ideas, but which is not centered on a single character or a single point of view. I tried to portray an atmosphere. An atmosphere that permeates a space, a universe.
When we look at the colors, the places, it’s a marvelous journey to which you invite us. But very quickly, everything is overwhelmed by violence. There is no hope, no justice, no innocence, no way out. Like the gardener laconically noting : “ Every place is a good place to die. » Robe of Gems is it a horror movie ?
When a friend watched the opening scene, he said to me, ” It’s a fairy tale and horror “. Of course, it is the portrait of something which is underlying and which pervades everything. When I started the film, I had a feeling of abandonment and a feeling of fear of the future, of not having a common future in some way.
Then I trusted those ideas and those impulses. I wanted them to permeate the whole film. I thought about that throughout the film. But Mexico is a very complex place. I didn’t want to show things frontally. I needed to show things aside. In a way, I wanted to show all the points of this “star”. And it is a very complex “star”.
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You take a lot of time to install us in atmospheres. You give us a lot of time to get into atmospheres for us viewers to imagine things. Can we say that your images are not projected to be watched, but to give time and to open spaces for our imagination ?
Yes. I consider that cinema must go far beyond the simple fact of telling facts to create a story. I consider cinema to be an experience. An experience that is very much linked to the body, to the physical body, because we live the present through the body. And in the narrative system that we’re used to today, because it’s ubiquitous, it’s a narrative based on what’s to come, a kind of anxiety about the future. And there will be a reward at the end.
But if you seek a reward, you forget the present. You forget your body. And I don’t think any human experience is really linear and direct: neither memory, nor dreams, or physical experiences. My goal was to create an atmosphere to bring me closer to the cinema in which I believe. And the cinema I believe in is the one that creates an experience through cinematographic language. An experience linked to intuition and that you can feel with your own values and your own perception of life. Even though he’s a well-designed character, he’s just a character of sorts.
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