By <a href="mailto:secretary@haaretz.co.il" class="tUbl2">Uri Klein</a>
CANNES - "When we started to work together, both of us had nothing, really nothing," says Spanish actress Carmen Maura about the years-long relationship she has had with film director Pedro Almodovar. "We were discovered together, we became stars together, we worked together for about 10 years and our relationship was so intense, both on the professional level and on the personal level, that he knew everything about me and I knew everything about him and at a certain stage I didn't know who I was and who he was. It was not normal. It had to blow up." Thus Maura explains the 17-year alienation between her and Almodovar. This rift began after "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" (1988), one of their greatest joint successes, and ended last year when Maura agreed to play one of the main roles in Almodovar's new film, "Volver," ("Return") which appeared on local screens yesterday.
The interview with Carmen Maura - in which I participated together with a group of other journalists from various countries - was held in the midst of the Cannes Festival in May, in which Almodovar's film competed for the prestigious Golden Palm award. During the meeting with Maura there was a definite feeling that "Volver" would take one of the main prizes, if not that one. In the end, Almodovar was awarded the prize for the best screenplay, a somewhat peculiar award considering the total artistry of the Spanish director. The prize for the best actress was awarded joi ntly to all six of the main actresses in his film, among them Maura and Penelope Cruz, who plays the leading role.
Maura showed up for the meeting full of energy, as effervescent as she is known to be from her many films, apologizing at the outset for her imperfect English and introducing the interpreter at her side. However, her rapid and energetic flow of words compensates for that and prevents her from even opening the packet of Marlboro Lights she asks someone to bring her; she also asks her to pull out the cigarette that she intends to smoke.
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'Life's too short'
In "Volver," a very charming and emotional black comedy that tells the story of three generations of women in one family in the region of La Mancha (where Almodovar was born in 1949), Maura plays the mother of Raimunda (P enelope Cruz) and Sole (Lola Duenas), who was burned to death four years earlier in a mysterious accident. At some point in the plot - the less you know about it the more you will enjoy its many twists - the mother returns from the dead to put things in order with respect to a number of the relationships of the women depicted in the film.
How was the renewed encounter between you and Almodovar?
Maura: "For me it was a stronger and more fascinating experience than even the film itself. When Pedro sent me the script and I read it, I immediately agreed to appear in the film. During the 17 years we didn't work together, we didn't meet very often nor did we talk very often. I'm not a person who picks up the phone and says, 'Hey, Pedro, what's new?' Our relationship had ended in a quarrel, and too much anger had accumulated between us. Therefore we met in a neutral place, we talked, and from that moment on it was as though the 17 years had never gone by.
"Both of us have matured, both of us have changed, and during the making of the film I discovered a different Pedro from the one I had known: more mature, more tranquil. However, it was amazing to discover the extent to which there was the same affection between us, the same chemistry. Therefore, the rehearsal stage, when we were working on the text and the characters, and the filming itself was an extremely pleasant experience."
When you saw the films Almodovar directed during those 17 years, did you say to yourself "I should have been performing in this film and playing that role"?
"No, I'm not like that. I'm not interested in a role unless it is offered to me personally by the director. I was spoiled by the fact that Pedro had written all the roles I played in his films especially for me. During the years we weren't working together I would never go to the premieres of his films, because I knew the reporters would make a big deal of it; they would stop me and pester me with their predictable questions about what had happened between Pedro and me and why we weren't working together anymore. I would go and see the films the next day, and while watching I would hear Pedro's voice in my mind talking to the actresses in the film and guiding them. I'm not a jealous type at all; life is too short and fascinating to waste it on unnecessary emotions like that."
However, Maura adds immediately that in her opinion the films she made with Almodovar in the 1980s were something special, and when I ask her whether she agrees with my opinion that the greatest of those films was "The Law of Desire" from 1987, in which she played a transgender actress, she agrees enthusiastically: "Yes, that was the peak."
If the shooting of the new film was easy and pleasant for her, her first viewing of it was a difficult experience. "When I saw myself for the first time on the screen in 'Volver,'" says the 60-year-old Maura, "without makeup and with the sparse gray hair, I was in shock. I asked myself: 'Who is that woman?' I was afraid people would think that's how I really look. Therefore it was important to me to show up at all the public relations events that accompanied the release of the film in Spain, where it has become a big hit, and now here, at the festival, as groomed as I can be."
No to America
Even though Maura is identified mainly with Almodovar's early films, she was considered his muse and became a cinematic icon. She also appeared together with him in films by many other directors and has worked not only in Spain but also in France and Italy. However, she has not appeared in Hollywood - not that she hasn't had offers.
"After 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,' which became a hit in America, I received many offers to appear in American films, but I refused them all," she says. "I can't stand Los Angeles. I can't stand places where it's impossible to go out of the hotel and take a walk. I can't stand places where they talk only about film, and the only criterion by which they judge you is how much money your film has made. There is film and there is life, and for me, life is more important than film. Furthermore, many European actors who went to Hollywood got lost. I didn't want that to happen to me."
Maura says Almodovar also received many offers from Hollywood, but he has not accepted any. In a scornful tone she says: "There isn't a famous actress whom I've met, and I'm talking about the biggest stars, who hasn't said to me: 'Oh, how I'd love to appear in one of Almodovar's films!' But I don't think Pedro would be able to work with those stars, who come to the sound stage accompanied by their retinue, which includes their children, the nanny, the husband, the PR man, the makeup artist, the hairdresser and the lawyer, and every time Pedro would tell them to do something they would say, 'I don't like it.'
"Pedro very much loves to work with women; he understands them and he feels comfortable with them. With men it's much harder for him, because then all the emotional and sexual tension he feels erupts. But he also wants every instruction of his to be carried out in full. He is not prepared for movie stars' caprices. He does not have time for nonsense. He wants the work to be done quickly and immediately. And he also has a special sense of humor that not everyone always manages to understand."
How does Almodovar work with actors? Does he give them a lot of instructions and talk to them about the motivations of the characters they are playing?
"In each case it's different. Pedro works with me completely differently from the way he works with Penelope Cruz, for example. We know each other so well and understand each other so we don't need to speak. He simply says to me: 'Carmen, do this,' and I do it. Altogether, I'm an actress who works in a very intuitive way. I never studied acting, but from an early age I knew I wanted to do this and this is what I most love to do. Even when I was a little girl it wasn't hard for me to imagine myself in the role of a princess, for example, and that's still true today. When I read the screenplay of 'Volver' and discovered that I was supposed to play the role of a mother who is a ghost, I knew right away I could do this. It has never been hard for me to act, because I can imagine myself in any character and in any situation.
"At present I am looking for a play that I can appear in. I love the theater, but appearing there means not taking part in a film for about a year, and this is always a pity for me. More than anything, I love to appear in films. I love the teamwork that is involved in making a film, the fact that all the time I am surrounded by a lot of people. And also," she adds with self-irony, "on a film stage I can play the big star, sit in the chair that is reserved for me and every time I don't like something I give an order that is carried out immediately. More than anything I love it that in film, as opposed to theater, the responsibility is not entirely mine, and I can simply enjoy the work, which to my mind was and remains a kind of enchanting childish game."
No regrets
The fact that she is already considered a "mature" actress does not bother Maura. "In Spain there is respect for women, and especially mature women," she says. "This is because we are in fact a matriarchal society where the women are stronger than the men, and the mother is the dominant figure in the family, which is the subject that 'Volver' deals with. When I hear how an American actress complains that there aren't enough roles for a woman over the age of 40, I laugh; and when I hear them also complaining that female stars in the United States get less money than the male stars, I say to myself: 'In Spain that couldn't happen.'"
Maura does not regret the rift there was between her and Almodovar; she does not regret anything at all. "I've always followed my intuition," she explains. "When I started to work with Pedro I was a poor single mother, and everyone said to me: 'Don't work with him; he's a difficult person, he's crazy, he'll make your life a misery,' And look what the two of us have achieved. However, being Pedro Almodovar today is rather difficult. He is so famous in Spain that he, unlike me, can no longer just go out in the streets and meet people."
Asked if she thinks they will make more films together, Maura shrugs and says, "Maybe, we'll see, who knows," and again stretches a hand toward her still-unopened packet of Marlboro Lights.
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