"Lanzarote is a unique place to film, I hope it fills up with filming and that this does not alter the ecological balance that the Island maintains at all," said Pedro Almodóvar today at the crowded press conference he offered in a complex of rooms in Madrid to present his film 'Broken Embraces' together with the newly Oscar-winning Penélope Cruz and the rest of the leading cast.
"It is a great lesson that the Island has been preserved as is, because it is the only place where you can walk in any direction and not find a single advertisement or a skyscraper next to a cliff," said the filmmaker from La Mancha when asked about the Island where he shot a good part of the film, in addition to having been, nine years ago, during a trip by Almódovar, the main source of inspiration for the film.
The man from La Mancha, based in Madrid for more than forty years, said that although the origin of 'Broken Embraces' is in a photo he took nine years ago on Playa del Golfo during a visit to the Island, shortly after his mother died, he had actually known Lanzarote since 1986, when he spent a few days there at César Manrique's house after filming 'Law of Desire'.
"It is the Island in whose nature I have found more dramatic colors," he said after referring to the blackness of its beaches and its "burgundy reds", and before "thanking" César and the authorities of the Island for the political decisions that were adopted to preserve its environment.
'AMOR FOU'
And, in addition, the filming of the tragic starting point of the 'amor fou' story between Mateo and Lena that takes place in the film, took place, without the team even finding out until they read it in the press, in the same roundabout where the Canarian artist died in a traffic accident.
Or at least that's what Almódovar said today when, referring to the peculiar charm of Lanzarote, he pointed out that the preservation of its natural environment is something that the Island "can throw in the face" of any other interesting place in the world.
And it was on a later trip, nine years ago, when the filmmaker found inspiration for 'Broken Embraces' in Lanzarote. His mother had just passed away and with the development of a photo of the beach of El Golfo, in whose black sand two figures were embracing that he had not perceived at first sight, was how it all began.
THE PHOTO OF 'PLAYA DEL GOLFO'
"That photo that I took and destroyed later, suggested many things to me, and that there was a mystery that I had to discover" Almodóvar said again today, "and I don't even know if I have discovered it yet, but it is the mystery of the story" of the film starring Penélope Cruz and Lluis Homar.
The return of probably the most internationally known of our directors is a story of maor dominated by fatality, jealousy, abuse of power, betrayal and guilt complex, an exciting and terrible story whose most expressive image is again the photo of the two lovers embracing on the beach, broken into a thousand pieces.
Together with Penélope - who could not avoid a question in which her loves with Bardem were related to the delivery of the Oscar, but who knew very well how not to answer it - at the press conference were also Blanca Portillo, José Luis Gómez, Rubén Otxandiano and Tamar Novas, in addition to the producer of 'El Deseo' and main "brain" of the Almodóvar factory, his brother Agustín.
ENJOY IT
In addition to wishing, already at the end, the inhabitants of Lanzarote to enjoy the film, the press conference constituted the usual spectacle that the brilliant man from La Mancha usually lavish in his public appearances thanks to his natural lack of inhibition and his qualities as a 'showman'.
Almódovar says that if lately he has abandoned comedies for films halfway between melodrama and 'film noir' it is because age makes him lead "a life of interiors" very different from the "very fun" of the 80s in which he was always "surrounded by people".
The winks to the previous cinema of Almódovar and to films like 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' are also part of a script in which Homar gives life to a film director who loses his sight and Penélope Cruz to a "bad actress" with whom, according to the girl from Alcobendas, only has in common "the passion for cinema".
ACN Press
