There are temporary fears and ancestral fears. There are terrors that are born from a shock, from a sudden action, and there are telluric terrors, buried deep within human beings. Of the latter, it is The crying, Pedro Martín-Calero’s feature-length debut, the latest Spanish film competing in the official competition section of the San Sebastian Film Festival. Two women, in different times and countries, will suffer the stalking and violence of a similar presence. And only other women will be able to glimpse their suffering and understand them.
In the team of The crying (which opens in theaters on October 25) brought together several friends who met a few decades ago at the Madrid Community Film School (ECAM). The director, Pedro Martín-Calero (Valladolid, 41 years old), and the film’s co-writer, Isabel Peña (Zaragoza, 41 years old), winner of the Goya for best screenplay for her work, met there. The kingdom y The beasts, also Borja Soler (The route) and Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who writes his films and series with Peña. Together they have created the production company Caballo Films, which is behind The cry. Martín-Calero and Peña, who was very present during the filming, talk about the film and the contribution of Spanish horror to the San Sebastian competition. Their film takes off the more it approaches the reflection on terror as a useful tool for part of society.
The filmmakers emphasize one of the premises they set when they started the project: “We didn’t want scares just for the sake of it. That is, no slamming doors, but rather for the audience to enter the story.” Two narratives are intertwined on screen, separated by just over two decades. One takes place in present-day Spain; the other goes back to the Argentine city of La Plata. The aesthetics of The cryingbeyond the technological devices, has some resonances with the American horror of New Hollywood, led by a beacon like the classic The devil’s seed. “It is an undeniable reference. We are interested in that time that seems like no time, that option of everything emerging from the characters, that you can breathe with them, even if they are part of a satanic sect, as in the case of Polanski’s film,” explains Peña. “And at the same time, it is a film without fat, without embellishments. That is what we wanted.”
The two have given a lot of thought to the subject of inheritance, the connection between both times and places. “We spent a lot of time writing, polishing, putting themes and then understanding that they had to be there, but not to dominate the narrative,” says Martín-Calero, who has spent years working in advertising. “For example, the family, what it brings and what is inherited.” Peña intervenes: “We also destroyed a lot. We started with an image, that of the one who causes terror, and when we realized what we wanted to tell we felt relief and condemnation. Relief, because it was already clear what was important to us and we went for it; condemnation, because we thought, how are we going to do it?”
Beyond creating The crying For the enjoyment of horror audiences, the filmmakers sought to touch on “social issues.” And Peña, whose speech is always clear and well articulated, explains: “We cared that if we are hearing on the news how different generations of women have been and are being crushed, that this was experienced on screen.” Martín-Calero adds: “Horror can be the surface, because what is primal is in its background, in what drives it. Even in the editing we were fighting not to be devoured by the subject matter, to find the balance between what is shown and what is hidden, to dispel the fear of our producers that the public would get lost and not understand certain things. And in the meantime, we were cutting out fat, going at least, less, less, fine-tuning.”
The filmmakers approached the project as a small film, quickly developed, produced and shot. “And then it got out of hand,” they confess. By adding themes, by having a character film —which complicates filming because there are images of images—, “by not wanting to trivialize anything,” by building a story that takes place in mundane architecture and with close-knit characters. “There will be no Dracula castles or nooks and crannies for scares, or archetypes of the genre,” they explain. “We wanted the viewer to assume that everyday life harbors many fears.”
That terror that is not seen, that society and especially women inherit as a condemnation, receives a clear name (not in the film): patriarchy. “We wanted to leave little crumbs of micro-machismo in the male characters… and in the female characters too. This is not about whether you are only a man and you are sexist, far from it. That would not be a serious reading of a general problem,” they point out. They wanted their cinema to communicate with the literature of Mariana Enriquez, in particular Our share of the night. “We wanted to get away from the cliché of filming in Buenos Aires, and we thought of Rosario. The world is much bigger than the one that takes place in the capitals, to broaden the point of view. Finally, due to filming permits and for the convenience of the production, we ended up in La Plata… where Enriquez studied! A huge and wonderful coincidence,” they explain.
The terrifying patriarchy prevents a happy ending, or does it? “We wanted to be brutal, because what is happening is brutal, but pessimism may be part of the problem. Without falling into infantilism, we wanted to emphasize that we must listen, believe, be together. Then something will begin to change. But let no one be fooled: The crying “It’s a horror story.”