Forever Your Maternal Animal, as seen by Valentina Maurel
First Prize Winner of la Cinéfondation in 2017 for Paul est là (Paul is Here), French-Costa-Rican Valentina Maurel presents this year at Un Certain Regard Siempre Soy Tu Animal Materno (Forever Your Maternal Animal) an ensemble film around a mother and her two daughters, and a return to native Costa Rica. Meeting with a director who digs, with her second feature film, a favourite subject : family bonds.
How did this project come about?
This project was born out of frustration and my inability to further develop certain characters in my first film. I wanted to create a true ensemble piece about motherhood, relationships between sisters, and returning home. And then one day my partner dreamed that I was going to make a movie about a mother and her two daughters and I took him at his word.
What was the atmosphere like on the shoot? Have you got any stories from the set?
We shot with a small team and the filming took place in a convivial atmosphere. It was moving to watch the relationships between the characters deepen as the actors gradually immersed themselves into the movie’s universe. Since we shot intermittently for seven weeks on the main set, as obscene graffiti gradually appeared on the entry wall, neighbors thought that we were a political propaganda team for the evangelical right. We still don’t understand how the graffiti led them to this conclusion, but it really made us laugh.
Can you share a few words about your actors?
I’ve always been embarrassed to admit that I think the world of Daniela Marin, I’m afraid it’ll seem like covert praise for my own work since she’s only acted with me. She is a great actress.
Mariangel Villegas owns this film’s breakout role. She had never acted before yet displays this exceptional courage, strength and exuberance, which is so indispensable to be able to portray Amalia.
I discovered Marina de Tavira in Roma and I was impressed by her presence, which is both fanciful and timeless. I wanted her to give Isabel’s character the energy of a movie heroine, someone excessive and intense, but rooted in a mundane reality. She expressed an elegance and humility that made us all soar.
What have you learned or discovered by making this movie?
I learned that my movies will probably all look alike. I delve into something very specific and it feels consistent. I also understood that I like cinema to be a place where you can discover your own truth. We make movies not to learn things, not even to find ourselves, but to lose ourselves.
What made you want to become a director?
I come from a family of artists where everything had already been attempted: music, poetry, theater, painting, the circus. I could have been a real rebel and become a doctor, but I preferred cinema, which no one had explored yet.
What are your influences?
Filmmakers discovered as a teenager : Lucrecia Martel, Greg Araki, Werner Herzog, Cassavetes, Hal Hartley.
French filmmakers that I discovered when I arrived in France : Louis Malle, Catherine Breillat, Rohmer.
But above all poets like José Emilio Pacheco, Miyo Vestrini, Robert Creeley, Thierry Metz, Charles Simic.
As well as two Russian authors, Chekov and Nabokov.
Can you tell us about your next project?
I think it will be a spy movie. I definitely want to focus on the expat community in Costa Rica in which I partly grew up. I would like to talk about the Europeans who live there during their strange missions for international cooperation, which I didn’t understand at all as a child, and who would at times become a little crazy as if they were being swallowed up by the scenery. They somehow became lost in San José, which does not resemble a mysterious jungle, but rather feels like a decadent, drunken night.
