In the 1990s, a young Maria de Medeiros had just timidly cross the Atlantic when a script of one Quentin Tarantino arrived. “It was a billet,” he recalls. “I read it with immense interest and I thought I wanted to do it because it was great, but I didn’t know who would want to see something like that. Thirty years after the premiere in Spain of Pulp Fictionthe Portuguese actress is still remembered for her role as Fabienne, Butch’s girlfriend, which Bruce Willis embodied. They are two sequences that last just 13 minutes, although they stand out in the history of cinema. His career since then is loaded with albums, plays and a hundred movies. They make up a unique and interesting career, whose last stop, for the moment, has been presented at the Malaga Festival and is called A fifth Portuguese. The star with Manolo Solo, is directed by Avelina Prat and premieres in Cinemas on May 9.
De Medeiros receives El País on Sunday afternoon, just three hours after landing on the Costa del Sol. Elegant, with sunglasses and blond hair, arrives smiling. A hard Monday awaits you: your agenda starts with the makeup session at seven in the morning and ends up touching midnight between interviews, photos, press conference and the film projection, among other commitments. It is not his first presence in Malaga, ”he said in the third edition of the Festival, in 2000, as a jury of the official section – although he never found it so rainy. It is an atmosphere of gray clouds, chaparrons and moisture, very similar to that lived in Ponte de Lima, town north of Portugal. It is almost on the border with Galicia and that is where he rolled A fifth Portuguese. “It was a fantastic opportunity to live that northern charm that is so much,” says who lives today in Paris after a stage in Barcelona.
The actress enters Amalia’s life, a mysterious woman born in Angola in times of colonialism that inherits a great property of fruit trees. Share with that character many similarities: age, mastery of six languages, nationality, the feeling of having lived several lives, a multitude of trips around the world. “It’s distant but, at the same time, I recognize myself a lot in it,” says De Medeiros, delighted to share prominence with Manolo Solo. His role is Manuel’s, which his wife Serbia suddenly abandons and, by chance, is reinvented as a gardener hiding his true identity. Among them is Rita – interpreted by a fantastic Rita Cabaço – who puts the point of joy and simplicity to the plot. Branka Katić completes the poster. “He speaks of identity, how we transported our past and reinvented our present,” says De Medeiros, who saw the work finished a few weeks ago and was surprised by the last plane, which was not the one that was written initially. “I love the end,” he says.
Director, actress, singer, of Medeiros accumulates titles in her filmography. Most in Europe, something that surprises Americans. “Where is María de Medeiros?” The magazine wondered a few weeks ago The Hollywood Reporterwhich alluded to the distance that the Portuguese took from American cinema after Pulp Fiction And the feeling, which they have in the US erroneously, that later did little more. “I already told them that I turned because I wanted to make my film about the Portuguese revolution, April captains. It was my vital goal and that brought me back here. It was a thirteen -year fight and I think it is a good thing that I have done in life, ”says who started in Hollywood cinema with Henry & June In 1990. He then went through the Spanish with Golden eggs Until that script of Tarantino catapulted her to fame.
“It was a bold, disobedient, rebellious artistic proposal. Pulp Fiction It didn’t change me so much. What really changed is that more scripts came to me that tried risky things … although only Quentin knows how to do it. Well, and also affected journalists who, since then, ask me for it, ”he finishes fun Airbaganother myth of cinematography, in this Spanish case. Over time he entered the Argentine, Brazilian or Mexican cinema, in addition to the Portuguese. And repeated behind the cameras when directing Our children In 2019. Among many other awards, he has a palm of honor of the Mostra de València and a star on the Paseo de la Fame de Almería.
Today of Medeiros is on tour with the play Person. Since I’m Been Me, Directed by Robert Wilson, where he gets into the skin of the poet himself and writer “with a mustyon and everything.” This work prevented him from going to the Berlinale last month, where he presented Reflection in a dead diamond, work of an experimental nature and directed by Helène Cattet and Bruno Farziani. Soon he will have to return to the stage with his musical facet – he has three albums – to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the publication of FeminaThe Legendary Tigerman album. “Actually everything I do is very close, it is in dialogue and integrates more or less in the same thing,” he says about his different artistic faces before heading to his first talks with the press and facing a long and rainy Monday in a Malaga that, these days, Portugal looks like.