10 · 05 · 07

I don’t think there is a strangest tale than El pasado, Héctor Babenco

Doris Morales/Translated by Vicente Castañar

Héctor Babenco was born in Argentina, he nationalized as a Brazilian citizen. He is a director who is interested in real topics about his country: the violence that children suffer in Sao Paulo or the situation prisoners live through at prisons.

In his newest film, El pasado, Babenco shows for the first time his film to a Spanish speaking audience in the 5th Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia. Mabi Abele, Analía Cousello and Gael García Bernal act on this film. The movie is based on Alan Pauls’ book, El pasado. It is about a couple, that after 12 years of marriage, split up, apparently they both agree on the separation although one of them does not resign to be forgotten and will do anything possible to get back together.

After being warmly introduced by Daniela Michel –the festival director, Héctor Babenco talked about his most recent film to the media. The film director thanked the festival director for such a warm welcome that also highlighted his career. Babenco, very affably, thanked everyone with his elegant serious polite and disguised sense of humor.

Babenco began his discussion by highlighting Mexico’s brotherhood with all the Central and South American countries, all of which have got a long history of social injustice and a history of brutal colonization planned by church and state, although all this has formed the ideologies of the Americas, the way we are, we love, we laugh and they way we look at the world.  

The film maker then talked about adapting the book into his film. “This novel was published in 2003, since then it has won a very important award in Spain; in this novel I found a short but big story, one I wished to show. This book is over 600 pages long, and it is not very cinematic like; when I asked Alan Pauls to give me permission to film his book, the first think he said was: ‘you are mad.’ The book author still thinks that it is impossible to adapt such a wordy and deep book –full of narrative layers. This book is all about feeling, it is very subjective, not naturalist, there I found a story to make my movie.”

“I saw someting within that book, as someone who finds a hidden fossil within a rock, then my task was to dug out this little bug and I knew I was telling a story that had never before been told. I think no one has ever told such a strange love story, so unique, because this is a love story after separation.”

“How can there be love after love? After spliting up? That is what the movie is about. It was filmed empirically, very naturaly, it is a drama, a drama which Mexico knows how to recreat since the 40s and 50s. It is all very modern, very concept like, all the sickening jealousies, wishing to be loved once more. Then tragedy, an accident, a love chase, it is the raw material that created bolero, tango, bossanova, the music that shapes the cultural core of Latinamerica.”

I was able to finish this film through perseverance, and through my enormous wish to work with great actors, with great scriptwriters, Gael’s contribution was very important. Gael’s quiet ways, non-wordy, of letting one know what he is thinking and feeling, the way he talks through silence created this almost impossible character, even though the main character is a woman who seldomly comes out.”

Gael had the wiseness of an intuitive actor, he knew how to build this silence, this character is driven by circumstance, he is an object for the different female characters in the movie.

It is a film which is very sui generis, it start with a clear separation, very friendly but it slowly transforms to a very sickening thing.”

                         I am a man who decided to make films