Elena knows Because it’s a film about mothers and daughters Adaptation of the eponymous novel by Claudia Piñeiro The film revolves around the relationship between the titular woman, an aging woman who suffers from a harsh Parkinson’s disease that she can barely manage alone, and her daughter Rita, who takes care of her and prioritizes her wishes. Places it in second place. and personal desires. It is also a film about mothers and daughters, because the protagonist, Mercedes Moran and Erica Rivas, sharing the set with her daughters, Mercedes Scapola and Miranda de la Serna. And finally, this is a film that, despite being stage Netflix Behind this – and the discovery by many viewers, it implies – lies the undoubted authorial stamp of the director. Anahi BerneriWho has returned to directing feature films after devoting seven years to other projects.
It will be released in theaters this Thursday after passing through the international competition of the Mar del Plata Festival and before landing on Netflix on November 24., Elena knows The narrative logic of its premise is twisted, focusing on the mental and emotional journey of Elena (Moran) during a train journey in which memories of her relationship with her recently deceased daughter (Rivas) emerge. Stops for everyone. , it was suicide. “It was quite challenging to adapt,” said the person in charge. because of you, Avatar And Alanis During a conversation after the first screening in Mar del Plata, a place where he returned after 18 years of performing a year without loveHis first film.
And he explained: “We had to change the timing of the story. Since everything could not be done in one trip we had to invent some very strange incidents on the train, so we turned the trip into something circular and very internal. But we didn’t want to resort to flashbacks, because going back and forth in time breaks the viewer’s identity, so we decided to give it spatial continuity so that there is something haunting in the film. It’s like being inside the mind of that grieving mother., With the production we said that Elena’s multiverse is imposed.” For Moran, her character is “one of those people who are paradoxically dreamed about and longed for.” “She was born because of her physical condition. A very vulnerable woman, but at the same time extremely patient and determined to survive despite everything. It was hard, but all areas of construction opened up the possibility of working in a very horizontal way, they Involved and committed myself artistically and emotionally to the film,” he said.
Throughout this journey, Elena must face the certainty of an irreplaceable absence while dealing as best she can with the physical limitations resulting from an illness that, among other things, prevents her from walking with small, slow steps and holding her head up. Forces one to become incapable. , It was not easy to replace someone like that, Moran said. “We interviewed specialist doctors to understand what Parkinson’s causes, as it is commonly known for tremors, but this one is more severe, limiting Elena’s movement and field of vision. . If they have to accomplish the mission that they’ve placed on their shoulders, which is to find out who murdered their daughter, having those limitations makes it that much more dramatic,” he said in the Teatro Auditorium’s lobby. .
Different thursday widow And BetibooPiñeiro’s other novels were adapted for the big screen, here the police take a secondary place., because it immediately becomes clear that the case will not go that far and that the theory of murder is Elena’s resourcefulness in the face of the impossibility of admitting that, perhaps, her daughter’s death was a desired act. This is the one whose interior Elena knows Layers of meaning are built around motherhood, a recurring theme in Berneri’s filmography and is strengthened here with the participation of Miranda de la Serna (Rivas’s daughter), who lives with her mother and Mercedes during her teenage years. Playing the same character as Scapola (Moran’s daughter). , in charge of a small but extremely relevant role during the final act.
“Producer Vanessa Ragone’s vision was there calling me. The suffering of the body and its suffering, even if it is not caused by illness, and motherhood are things that affect women greatly and, at least for me, are the most important events in life. Here I had to look at it from a different place, from caring for a mother and wondering to what extent we mothers believe that our children are our property. Sometimes, for strong women, or for those of us who have to be strong to get a place in society, It’s hard for us to see women we consider weak, We cannot take a good look at the weaknesses of our daughters, our mothers,” reflected Berneri, who then spoke with Moran and Rivas. page 12,
-Both Erica and Mercedes joined this project in the early stages. Anahi, does putting the characters’ faces from the beginning change the way you think about the film?
Anahi Berneri: -I think one writes after seeing the face of an actress, but at the same time here it was a transformation. I knew that to create a creation I had to ask Mercedes for a lot of things. I was trying to imagine her voice as this arrogant, denying Elena who has this beautiful ability to make others uncomfortable by saying everything she believes and thinks.
-There is also a significant physicality to Rita as she gives the feeling that she is overwhelmed and overwhelmed by situations. How did they work on it?
Erica Rivas: -The first thing I did was to make myself a different body and create one that I thought had been put aside a long time ago. Rita is always somewhere else; It’s not in him, it’s in his mother. There is no room for that, except in those specific moments in which we see how she is without maternal influence.
-Elena arouses great sympathy, but her behavior also causes discomfort. What motivates Elena to act this way?
Mercedes Moran: -Beyond the disease and everything associated with it, one thing that caught my attention is the bond’s potential for dysfunction, which can challenge anyone. You don’t have to be close to someone suffering from an illness to be able to see yourself in that mirror., Good intentions are not always enough. The relationship between mothers and daughters is much more complex than the sugar-coated and advertising image. Elena, in addition to loving reproaches like all mothers, has a very noble character and the impossibility of expressing affection, which here increases the complexity of a young woman becoming a “mother” to her own mother. This usually happens when we have already accomplished a large part of our lives.
,This film is based on the working middle class social environment. Does this affect the characters’ behavior?
A. B:-Yes, of course. We try to show what happens when you have to take care of someone who is sick, you have to continue working and you don’t have any support or a way to be with anyone. On the other hand, there is the question of what happens to social functions, the disability system and the medical system. There is a lack of security provided by social class. We thought about this a lot with co-author Gabriela Larralde: What are the options for that daughter? Put her in a nursing home to continue her life or blame yourself for living for your mother?
-Mercedes portrayed her character as a mixture of vulnerability and tenacity, a dialectic that was present in many of Anahi’s previous films…
A. B:-It’s just that Sometimes we are very brave and sometimes, very weak and cowardly., Elena’s story is that of a strong woman – the film states that she has been a professional – who has achieved everything she could in a patriarchal system. It is more manly than men and is making room for the elbows. This generates contempt in many women, a non-recognition of vulnerability towards weaker women who act differently. The same thing happens with Rita as with Elena: she appears to be very calculating which leads her to believe that she knows what is best for her daughter.
,Beyond the question of sadness, this is also the story of a mother who doesn’t know her daughter, right?
A. B:- Who really knows the other? Who could be in the other head? Above all, in the case of mothers, we think we know everything about our children and we think we understand them deeply, but they never cease to surprise us. Part of the sense of belonging at play is imagining that your children are “yours,” when in reality, they are people with their own choices. Elena she clicks, understanding that her daughter chose to do what she did, no one made the decision for her.
-How did the idea of calling Mercedes Scapola and Miranda de la Serna come about?
A. B: -I remember telling Vanessa that I had the idea of calling Mercedes for that scene. Then we had open casting for the character of young Rita, and we immediately told ourselves it would be Miranda. I’m very grateful for the union of mothers and daughters, because that’s the crisis in this film: the figure of a mother, who can do great harm if rejected, even if she wants to help or do something else. For his daughter.
M.M:-It was a great pleasure for me. It was a very important scene because it was something that my character was going to do for the first time. Knowing that I was going to do this with mei This gave me a lot of peace. We don’t usually do this, but when we have to work together, we give good feedback to each other and perform well. At a certain point we thought Elena would let herself be emotionally won over, but we didn’t know what form that was going to take. We knew what would happen, but we had a huge margin of expressive freedom. miranda and mei They are the type of actresses who are there and make things easy for you. It was also added because the conversations and comments were functional for what we were doing. I’ve known Erica since she was very little, so in Miranda I saw that Erica again. All this was very inspiring to develop the visuals.
A. B:-We did a lot of rehearsal work and talked about our families. We have placed a huge emotional and personal burden on him. It was important to understand what type of relationships we had with our mothers and our mothers.
-Miranda plays Rita as a young woman. Erica, did you prepare for the role with him?
E.R.: -Yes, we were thinking about gestures and trying to get other people to do things that Anahi wanted us to do. This was a very good process because sometimes you are alone in seeing how your character changes. In this case, we all thought about it. Anahi wanted her to have a certain way of walking, so we thought about it together for a long time at home.
-Anahi recently said that when she directs she feels like a choreographer, when she works with actors who understand their roles the instructions are of the same order. Was it like that here?
A. B: -With the whole team, but especially with Mercedes, we had to be very careful about the choice of shots to reflect what happened on camera with the body and the effort. For example, in the scene where he gets up from the bed, we had to change a lot of things to make that effort noticeable. Effort in some form or the other is seen on the basis of planning. If we chose Very Normal, transfers were very slow.
M.M.:-There was a physical behavior that determined the rhythm of the film, because a man with his head bowed could not be seen by cameras located in the usual places. It was a behavior that greatly complicated camera work, lighting, and narrative rhythm.
A. B:-We also had to put lights on the floor so that Mercedes’ eyes could shine. It was a very difficult task in which we had to be very careful not only about the choreography but also about the body and performance.
MM: -But Anahi had the entire film in her mind, so in that sense it was simple. Rewatching the film reminded me of things he said in the heat of filming, like how he told me to start with my head in a certain position. He had also thought about the version. Anahi’s work in adapting the novel was tremendous.
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