How is Bardo, from Netflix, Griselda Siciliani at the press conference and the new Cate Blanchett in Venice

With a blue dress and white flowers, short sleeves, with a black belt that marks the waist, a black bag and more dark than how you see it in the film, Sicilian Griselda came to the photocall of Bard, by Alejandro González Iñárritu. And at the request of Daniel Giménez Camacho (Zamak), the protagonist, gave himself a passionate kiss on the mouth. Griselda finally burst out laughing.

In addition to going to a movie, you also need to be accredited to attend a press conference here. With nine (9, IX) people seated to answer questions from the press, the center is known to be the director. Griselda is sitting to the left of González Iñárritu.

-Good afternoon, if you don’t mind we’ll speak in Spanish – debuts the Mexican winner of 4 Oscars, three of which for Birdmancrowned by applause, which betrays the interest aroused by much of the press Bard-.

Y Bardwhose plot has been kept under lock and key, begins as a comedy, after a shocking image with a shadow flying over the desert (first allusion to Birdman). Lucia (Siciliani) gives birth to Mateo, but the baby refuses to be with us, wanting to return to the womb. And well, they introduce him to his mother again.

Much will change in almost three hours, because the story will not be limited to the couple of Silverio and Lucía. She will focus on him, a successful journalist and documentary filmmaker who left Mexico for the United States and returns to receive an award. Even in Los Angeles they want to reward him, just when Amazon (Netflix produces the film) plans to buy Bajo California, Mexico, to give it to the United States …

The film combines dream and reality, in a rigorously elaborated script between Iñárritu and our compatriot Nicola Giacobone. Since then, Iñárritu has never returned to shoot in Mexico loves dogs (2001). Shot with sequential footage, it includes scenes where the imagination wins over everything, with floors flooded or filled with sand, a huge pile of corpses in El Zócalo, Mexico, people crawling, another collapses and “disappeared” and more.

Iñárritu, later in an exclusive interview with Clarionewill ensure that the film, which competes for the Golden Lion, will be released in theaters in Argentina, and then on Netflix streaming (at least in the United States, it will be on December 16).

“Today, curiously, is an anniversary for my family and for me in particular: on September 1, 2001 we left Mexico, we went to live in the United States, and when we left there was a great illusion and many happened things, because we thought we were leaving. for a year, and it’s been 20 “.

“That event is fundamental to the origin of this film, because what is most present when you leave your country is the absence of that country, which is present at all times. Mexico is a state of mind for me. Every country is a state The stories we have been told, and the ones we tell ourselves, it happens that those stories or moods dissolve, and this film is an interpretation of that absence and how when you come back. .. “

“It’s like finding a new friend, people find me different, because a lot of things have happened. This film is the emotional reinterpretation of a memory, that’s what this film is.”

“This film, unlike the others, I did not do it with my head, I did it with all my heart – he continues -, and from there the pact is more sensitive but very liberating, because the digestion of these experiences is a interpretation of a reality that happens between an event, between the imagination of the event, and that place in between is the bard, and when you revisit it, of many things that you have experienced on the surface of the unconscious and in the subconscious, and the visits which are done inwards, accommodating them, because there can be a lot of pain, but also save a lot of joys ”.

-The film is an emotional journey rather than an autobiographical one.

It’s an emotional journey, it’s nothing autobiographical, it doesn’t pretend to be true but honest at that level. Memory has an emotional uncertainty, it has no truth. I made the film with a lot of courage, courage and uncertainty to be able to explore these things and try to make sense of them. And the hardest thing is sharing them, and that’s what happened today: I shared the heart which is the richest part, it’s a very hard birth.

And it will be Griselda’s turn, so that she can at least give testimony of what the shooting in Mexico was like, of that family of four, the couple and their two children. “Family chemistry, it all happened. Sometimes it doesn’t happen with colleagues and you have to work on it anyway, but when chemistry and construction happen, telling a bond, when it happens, it’s a gift and you just have to celebrate “, she began.

Lucía’s composition “was based on the tone of the performance, and that’s what Alejandro made me realize that he liked my way of acting: the tone I had was good, it was in favor of what the film needed. In my last casting with Daniel it was love at first sight, we didn’t know each other, “said the actress, which has some scenes with total nudity.

“There is an important person here, Nicolás Giacobone, who ever since Extremely beautiful He worked with me, “Iñárritu resumed. This is our third work together, and from the script, with great precision being able to get into that precision (highlight the word), from the writing it was very clear.” Giacobone, who won an Oscar for the original screenplay by BirdmanHe simply nodded his thanks.

-You said that now you are more liberated, to what extent has writing, shooting and giving life to this film transformed you? Will you see a freed Iñárritu, with different motives and films?

-Difficult to answer, because I don’t know what I will do now. Seven years had gone by without holding a camera. The last thing he did was a virtual installation of flesh and sand (as part of the Cannes Film Festival).

I don’t know when I’ll be shooting again, I have no plans. I’m less and less interested in reality in the cinema. Cinema is the most powerful tool for dreaming. There is no time in dreams, nor in cinema. In both media there is the fragmentation of time and space, in our heads and with the camera. The reinterpretation of reality is what interests me most.

Cate Blanchett, terrible and terrible

The other film in competition for the Golden Lion is Tarby Todd Field (In the bedroom), with the protagonist of Cate Blanchett. The only thing they have in common is the extension (two hours and 38 minutes, slightly less than the Bardo).

Blanchett is in every scene and in 99% of the shots. He composes the title character, a somewhat despotic American conductor, who conducts in Berlin, where he married his wife (Nina Hoss) and has a daughter. The screening begins with the final titles, and continues with a talk – long, but not monotonous – in which she is interviewed in front of an audience and talks about her profession.

Gradually everything will become cloudy, the management of Tár may not be ideal, but the almost dreamlike life and work will turn into a gripping nightmare.

And the end … Field, who was an actor (Eyes wide open, by Kubrick) squeezes, squeezes and takes all the juice of Blanchett’s performance, who can now enter the list of candidates for the Volpi Cup. He would be the second, after the past 15 years I’m not there.