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Mexican premiere of Carrie by Kimberly Peirce

Carrie, by U.S. director Kimberly Peirce, was presented on Friday, October 25, at the11th FICM, as part of the festival’s program of international premieres. Alejandro Ramírez Magaña, president of the festival, introduced the film, saying it was an honor to have the director in Morelia.

Before the screening, Peirce told the audience that she was very excited to present Carrie. She said she fell in love with Stephen King’s novel of the same name, published in 1972, and hoped that one day everyone would read it. She said it was an amazing story about a mother and a daughter who has special powers and that she loved adapting it to the big screen. It is also a story about vengeance, she added.

After showing the film, the director talked to the public about the source of inspiration for the film. She said there are three main themes in the novel. The heart and soul of the story is the relationship between a mother and her daughter. It is a mother who is terrified of the world, of people, and of her own sexuality. Although she loves Carrie, she punishes and represses her in order to protect her. It is also a story of a daughter who loves her mother dearly but who also desperately wants acceptance and she wants to grow. To the director, the most important thing initially was to show the love between them. Carrie arrives home feeling guilty and looks for the approval of her mother. Her mother offers her religion as an answer, suggesting that she be the priest and Carrie the congregation. Her daughter accepts because she is searching for her mother’s love. But we are creatures of habit and her mother takes out a knife and wants to kill her. Carrie’s powers protect her and they both “fight to the death,” even though Carrie doesn’t want to. This was one of the main parts of the film, the other, the super powers. This is also the origin of a story of super heroes. Carries is not accepted or loved, but has power.

The second theme, the director continued, is revenge. We all want justice. The only way we can tolerate revenge is to fall in love with Carrie from the beginning. She is not very pretty, she is a misfit, and is not very bright, but she is like all of us. Carrie represents us because we all have problems. When she goes after people who have hurt her, we are in her shoes and we say: “I also want to take revenge.” We like stories of revenge that are based on justice.

The third theme, she added, is its modernity. It is surprising that the story could happen at any time. It is current; it is today. Peirce said she interviewed students, parents, teachers and principals about what is going on in schools in the United States and in other schools. It is worse than what we see here, she said. We all have cell phones with audio and video. We live life and we record it and we put it on social networks and we want people to like it. This, on a world level, is both for better and for worse.

We love Carrie, she said, and we don’t want her to die! But the story says that she dies and we have to be courageous. There are many stories where people don’t want the main character to die, but I knew that she could survive. We always like a good structure and a good tragedy and we owe this to the character who must die.