The first poster that announced Ritaof Paz Vega (Seville, 1976), The film left the decorated knee that every street child deserves on display. “I was an analogue child,” says the actress now film director. A wound decorated with a scab (an ugly word) stains like mercromine and smells like the breath of freshly opened bags of peanuts. In the second and final poster, Rita does a handstand and, from down there, she contemplates the world. Hers and ours. Rita is not exactly Paz Vega, but she is quite similar. Because of her accent from the Andalusian neighbourhood, because of the heat and, above all, because of the excessive size of her eyes. Children, let us not forget, are those beings who appear in photos with their eyes completely open. Old people too. But the latter always look the other way. The kids, however, fix their gaze on the lens. And there they leave it. Carefree, insolent and with a mean face. Everything is still to be written. Even the possibility of writing itself. It was in 1933 when Zero in conduct, Jean Vigo’s film, took the risk of proposing on screen, perhaps for the first time, the metaphor of childhood as the only and last space of freedom. And of resistance. The film, it could not be otherwise, was censored. But that is another story.
Rita’s story, like Paz’s, is that of Spain in the 1980s (specifically in June 1984), a story that has been seen for the first time at the Locarno Festival. The screening began yesterday at half past nine in the evening in the dazzling Locarno Film Festival. Big Square, This is the place that the Swiss Leopard Festival (that is its symbol) reserves for its guest stars. “What I like is that it is an auteur film festival,” says Paz (not Rita) to make her merits clear. It has not been the name or the fame but something else, she says, that has brought her here.
The other, to put it in context, is a drama narrated in a low voice from the existential drowsiness, let’s call it that, of a girl who discovers the world of adults. with all its contradictions, with all its violence, with each and every one of its miseries. But also with a strange and rare joy that when it comes, it comes with all the consequences and with open arms, and it sweeps away. Kids’ stuff. It tells the story of two brothers who are played with masterful naturalness by the children. Sofia Allepuz and Alejandro Escamilla. They are two children who, basically, look. And what they observe with dazzling eyes is a Spain in full transition from a dark place to a hopeful one, although not exactly bright. Or not yet. The film is valid as a portrait of children and as a social x-ray; as a melodrama and as a mystery story.
«There is a part of history that is completely autobiographical. “Everything that has to do with the family dynamic, with the father who works and the mother who makes clothes, I have experienced first-hand. The truth is that the film could have been set in the present, but it suited me that everything took place in the past, in my past, to avoid risks,” says the now director, stopping and continuing: “You can’t make a first film unless it’s about something you know very well and that you know is part of you. In reality, you can’t make a film unless it’s something very personal, but if it’s the first one like this one…”
Paz Vega says that she feels unable to explain why she has decided now, and not at any other time in the 25 years she has been in the profession, to launch herself into directing. “It has been something that I have not been able to or wanted to control. It has been a desire that has been growing inside me until the moment came to go ahead,” she explains, at least as passionately as Rita at some point in the film. But since every dream needs a budget, an execution plan and enough money to become a reality, the production company Áralan Films was there to make sure that the thing did indeed go ahead. “I remember that some time ago I spoke with Marta [Velasco] and Gonzalo [Bendala]”I told them I had an idea for a film and they asked to see the script. The fact that someone wanted to listen to me and read something I had written was decisive. I needed the motivation that everyone needs: the motivation to be heard. So, I had two possible ideas, but they were just that, two ideas more or less developed, but without organizing them into scenes or structuring them or anything,” she says. And she continues: “I took two weeks to write the script, I presented it to him and here we are.”
The last sentence (the “here we are”) does not do justice, despite what it may seem, to the time spent. All in all, Rita has taken its author nearly nine years. Understandably, it has not been almost a decade of filming, but that has been the time needed to ensure production. “Five years ago I was about to start, but at the last minute everything went wrong. It was just before the pandemic, so everything was delayed again,” she recalls.
In RitaAs we said, Paz is the girl, but she brings to life the actress we are used to seeing since before she amazed the world in 2001 with Lucia and sex It’s the mother, Rita’s mother. “In truth, that role has been more of a price I’ve had to pay. I did it for convenience and, I admit, for marketing. It was never the motivation for the film, as other actresses might do, to offer myself the role that would otherwise never come. Nor was the film a whim of an unemployed actress. Of course I will continue working as an actress. I have three children and unfortunately I can’t afford to direct a film every nine years. But what definitely interests me, fulfills me and I want to continue doing is writing and directing films,” she answers emphatically to avoid suspicions, innuendos and, why not, bad thoughts.
Rita could be described as a film that is a child of its time. As 20,000 species of bees, of Estíbaliz Urresola, as Alcarrasby Carla Simon, as The Messiah, by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, as Creatureby Elena Martín, or how The girls y The motherly, Both by Pilar Palomero, Rita also aims to be a re-reading of recent times from a different perspective (we won’t say feminist, but also), from a committed point of view that discusses the brutal rigidity of what is given. The incontrovertible fact that all the films mentioned are starring girls only adds evidence to the evidence.
«I find it difficult to be more explicit about why I made a film like this. In all the stories I thought of and think of to bring to the screen there is always a social component. I think that cinema in general has to denounce what happens if it is something unfair. Of course it is about entertaining, but there is a responsibility that must not be overlooked. It is good that cinema generates debate or proposes a common place of reflection. I do not dare to say that it has to educate, but it is important to be clear that as a society there may be certain things that need to be changed… That is what interests me about cinema. It is clear.
Rita It is a film to watch slightly bent over, with that not so much condescending but polite inclination with which adults address children. The gaze that the film returns, on the other hand, seems somewhat carefree, a little insolent and essentially clear. It hurts a little, yes, as the wounds that never heal on children’s knees hurt. Without a doubt, an interesting and very promising debut.