Fernando Pérez premieres his Madrigal

BY MIREYA CASTAÑEDA —Granma International staff writer—

FERNANDO Pérez is a director who is always full of surprises. He takes on great risks and acquits himself well. At the moment, he is premiering in Havana Madrigal, a film "diametrically opposed to Suite Habana" that, against the odds of many opinions, was a total success.

There was a special screening of the film at the Chaplin cinema for specialized press and critics and he later agrees to participate in a question-and-answer session that becomes very intense, like his film itself.

"I’ll be sincere. Madrigal was written after La vida es Silbar (Life’s A Whistle,1997), and before Suite Habana (Havana Suite, 2003), but there was no financing. So then came Suite, for me one of the strongest emotions was the public’s relationship with this film, for that reason Madrigal had to be totally different. This kind of search is what’s always interested me as a director."

Realistically, Madrigal is a feature film in line with his filmography - Clandestinos (1987), Hello Hemingway (1990), Madagascar (1994) – in which, as he himself admits, the director "hopes at the very least to leave the audience with preoccupations."

Some see the new film as a break from the past. The filmmaker concedes: "perhaps not a break exactly, but a project that lays down premises that haven’t been taken to the extreme as they have in Madrigal," including those that include a "deliberately artificial" atmosphere that creates "a dimension that has nothing to do with realism."

Scriptwriter Fernando Pérez (together with Eduardo del Llano and Susana María) takes on a dramatist challenge by telling two stories, which transform the film into something intriguing and disquieting, by way of "that reality-fiction ambivalence."

And so he presents the character of Javier (excellently played by the young Carlos Enrique Almirante in the first story and by the experienced Luis Alberto García – who also plays the Angel - in the second.) "Who is Javier and what is his attempt to transform everything into literature? I think this is something that forms part of the lives of many creators, seeing life as a source of inspiration."

He accepts that his previous films start from emotion and move toward reflection and that now he has decided "to create a certain distance, because this is a reality that starts off from the artificial. I always think that form and content are bound together. Every film sets out specific problems to be resolved and each one is a world in itself."

For his visual and aural universe, he relies on the photography of Raúl Pérez Ureta and the soundtrack was the responsibility of Edesio Alejandro, both "have central responsibility in terms of communication. Because this film requires strange and diverse atmospheres."

Almirante opens the film by singing a madrigal. Don’t expect the famous song "Madrigal" by Puerto Rican singer Dany Rivera. "I wanted it," Fernando Pérez told Granma International, "but the copyright fees were too high and we couldn’t pay them."

The atmosphere is achieved with the incisive utilization of half-light, rain and smoke. "For me, the most important symbolic element is the smoke. Human beings throughout the world today run the risk of being conditioned by media smokescreens and are losing individuality. The metaphor in which sex is mandatory would be the absolute loss of individuality." Without doubt, disturbing images.

Madrigal is also an urban film, although "a Havana carried to another dimension. The most recognizable place is the roof where Javier lives, from which you can see the Capitolio. There are other buildings, but filmed in such a way that they could be in another city."

The city in the second part of the film, in which the characters are living in an apocalyptic future, "is fiction, it is Cuba and the world. It’s about disturbing universes."

Is Madrigal Cuban or universal? "I believe that it is a very Cuban film. Made here, where my motivations and my truth are."

It is a Havana taken to another dimension. "Madrigal does not deliberately respond to demonstrate a Cuban essence. The most topical elements are not there, but would it be less Cuban because of that?"

Madrigal, a co-production between ICAIC and the Spanish company Wanda Visión, was shot on high-resolution digital film and then transferred to 35mm and, according to Fernando Pérez, there was a long casting process.

Fortunately, he managed to assemble an excellent team; every performance is outstanding: Liety Chaviano (Luisita, Javier’s counterpart), Yailene Sierra (Elvira), Ana Cecilia de Armas (Stella Maris), the late Armando Soler (the elderly man-grandfather) and Spanish Carla Sánchez (Eva).

The film embarked on its international tour at the recent Berlinale where it was shown outside of competition. "I would say that the reaction was quite controversial. There was appreciation on the part of the audience, but it is a film that demands a certain level of participation."

Madrigal is a complex work, a continuance of the films of Fernando Pérez, where nothing obeys improvisation or the symbolic or metaphoric and that opens itself up, as always, to the spectator’s participation.