Borja Cobeaga and Víctor García León: “If your child is special, the neighbor’s too, and the other and the other, then no one is special” | Cinema: premieres and opinions | EUROtoday

If we needed to accredit and specify the Holy Trinity of the portrait of up to date Spain, the trio of filmmakers who, by means of movies and sequence, are elevating testimony of what the Spaniards on the road are like in a bitter, loving and honest method, they’re Víctor García León (Madrid, 49 years previous), Borja Cobeaga (Donostia, 48 years previous) and Diego San José (Irún, 47 years previous).

And they’ve performed it collectively or alone, in movies like Eight Basque surnames, Los aitas, Negotiator, Selfie, More disgrace than Glory, Pagafantas, No controls y Faith of ETA or in sequence just like the trilogy Vote Juan, What per week, Get away from me, Your Majesty, Celeste, Jakarta o I do not like driving. Now two of them, those that are dad and mom, García León and Cobeaga, have joined forces in High capacities to carry a mirror as much as the present incoherence that faculties trigger in Spain: dad and mom who look there for a social elevate for his or her kids, dad and mom entangled within the ideological incoherence of taking their kids to a non-public middle whereas defending public training… At the core, a information story from 2018, when a former member of the Los Miami gang was shot lifeless exterior the British Council faculty in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid) after dropping off his son. The movie takes benefit of this hook to fictionalize how the dad and mom’ affiliation would take this homicide and who would stick for the hole left within the college students, on this case a few morally unlucky folks embodied by Israel Elejalde and Marian Álvarez. They resolve to invent excessive talents of their solely son to have the ability to aspire to that place in a really posh middle the place, for instance, the youngsters of his boss go, a despicable man performed by Juan Diego Botto.

All these substances catapult High capacities, written by each and directed by García León and which is competing on the Málaga competition earlier than its business premiere in just a few days, on March 27. The two filmmakers sit in entrance of the recorder. In their dialog they intertwine social evaluation and wild jokes, bittersweet phrases and a sure important distance. It’s like watching Billy Wilder’s mind in motion, which, in keeping with his good friend William Holden, was overflowing with razor blades. They discuss and discuss, identical to how they wrote the script.

“Azcona said it like that, that films are written by talking,” García León begins. “We would get together in Malasaña and talk and talk. And whoever had less work at any given time would put it on paper,” remembers the director. “Borja started that work and then I followed it. In fact, talking to Borja is very fun.” The aforementioned factors out: “The dynamic has been so joyful that Víctor is the scriptwriter in the second season of Your Majesty.”

Cobeaga got here to the mission after García León. “I was moving and looking for a school for my son. I was full, but I can’t say no to a Victor movie, and on top of that the things that life gave me pushed me to that premise. My life as a screenwriter is divided into two stages: the one in which my mother told me that I did everything on screen, and the one now, when it is my wife who tells me that I put everything in the scripts. So let’s go for the children and the schools.” The director factors out: “I think we have done a very good job of our journey through parenthood.” Cobeaga: “It refers to our insecurities, frustrations and the feeling of what the fuck am I doing.” García León: “Let’s call it degrees of failure.”

Both insist that they don’t seem to be modest, that they’ve put all the pieces they needed into the script. Cobeaga: “I don’t share the argument that before you could make more jokes.” García León: “Now you can be even more uncomfortable than before. Because there are more rules. I find it funny that people who are all the time wanting to be and comply with the rules of feminism, of inclusion, of whatever… And it is an impossible exam in which we all fail all the time. It is self-parody.” Cobeaga: “In the movie we tell what we tell children: ‘You are special’. If your child is special, and the neighbor’s child is also special, and the other one and the other one, then no one is special. Or the competition between children, another disaster that we encourage.” And the director: “The film is about many things.”

Cobeaga noticed the primary montage when he returned from trip, and felt a pang: “It was devastating. No one is saved. Meanness is transversal. It affects us all, whoever we are and wherever we come from.” García León: “I really like a phrase by Ettore Scola that said: ‘They are monsters, but they are mine’. They will be mean and miserable and terrible and clumsy… Okay, well, I love them, they are like me. Maybe I am a bad person.”

Laughter regardless of himself

The two scriptwriters hope that viewers can be tricked into seeing High capacities. “Hopefully we can get people to come in without knowing that it is a comedy and that they can’t help but laugh. That we can make them smile against their will,” García León begins. “But, do you think we will achieve it? At least, it already happened to you with Get away from me, I take advantage of this forum to say that it is the best Spanish comedy of the 21st century.” And on the finish, what do you anticipate these viewers to say? “That they ask that the State maintain all our kids. And if somebody desires to get one thing else, which we do not give recommendation on display screen, it’s that we cease having kids. In High capacities they make the child dizzy. In the tip, it does not matter, it is just like the motorcar Placid, “Nobody seems to care,” they reply collectively, though García León continues: “We tell the myth of Frankenstein. We take them to extracurricular activities, we change their cabbages… and at 15 years old they look at them and say: ‘I don’t like it, it’s stupid. Let the people come to kill him, and then we will have another one.’ Well, of course it went wrong, if you did it, you idiot!” Although they confess that parenthood has improved them, and that yes, they have fallen into all the contradictions in their children’s schooling. “For me, if my children machine-gunned me,” confesses the director, “I would understand it, and I would even testify in their favor.”

The ghost of Diego San José flies over, and the laughter continues. “Víctor is a much better person than Diego, where is he going?” “Well, it’s gone to drama, it doesn’t count.” “Well, yes and no. Because since he had held back so much in Jakarta, In summer he polished dialogues Your Majesty and he cracked the best jokes in the universe. Víctor and Diego are very different, they work in opposite ways, although the result in the end is equally good.” And García León concludes: “There is something of that observation of the human being that we share. I understand very well with filmmakers who tell you: ‘I’ve seen something and there’s a movie there.’ Not the director who comes up with a story, but the one who has seen something. Our job is to portray what surrounds us. Diego wasn’t worth it to us, I don’t think he’s ever stepped foot in a ball park in his life. [risas]”.

García León assures that this is a film very much theirs, nestled among other works. “Call it… a free movie, and now we have to make them between industrial jobs, as a result of now we have to eat. We would all prefer to movie well-paid auteur movies.” [como si fueran de plataforma, interrumpe Cobeaga] and filmed within the Caribbean. Well, that does not exist. So now we have to mix. And deep down, that course of is just not dangerous, as a result of the scripts profit from these rests.”