THE END OF IT © Lluis Tudela
The End of It, interview with Maria Martínez Bayona
A Catalan filmmaker trained at the National Film and TV School in London, Maria Martínez Bayona is presenting The End of It at Cannes Première, a debut feature film with a star-studded cast (Rebecca Hall, Gael García Bernal, Noomi Rapace) in which a 250-year-old artist decides she’s had enough of life. A conversation with a filmmaker who builds her worlds around the questions that obsess her.
Where did the idea for The End of It come from?
The very first idea was an article I read years ago. Something like: the first person who will live to 1,000 years old will be born in the next two decades. It absolutely shocked me, it touched a core of my personal fears of aging and dying. I started to fantasize about what life and society would look like if we reached that point. And then I thought about how obsessed we already are with pushing death back, erasing wrinkles, erasing all footprint of living. If we erase death, what happens to our relationships, our sense of chapters, our motivations? That was the starting point.
How did you build the world of the film?
You have to think about almost every department of life and imagine how it would work in that context. The building of that world was very much thinking about domestic life, what furniture do you keep when you never move, what friends do you have, what exercise you do. From the silliest thing to the most profound thing, you start building from there. And this world is more an accumulation of layers of past than anything else.
The AI is a character in her own right. How do you write a character with no body?
For me, Sarah’s motivation is curiosity, wanting to know and understand what the other person is thinking and feeling. That’s her job. In a world where human relationships are so strained and dormant, I found it interesting to explore what this curiosity or friendship that an AI provides could mean. Almost a motherly figure. It’s a very different approach to AI than what we see now.
A few words about your actors?
Rebecca is amazing. Claire, at the beginning of the film, is in a context where everything is seemingly perfect, a very privileged, safe life. But there’s something off, something that doesn’t feel fulfilling. It isn’t until her 250th birthday party that she sees it: she lives in the middle of absurdity, and she wants to stop. That’s the starting point of the character. For a first feature, to have a cast of this level is a privilege. The essence of each character stayed the same, but they all elevated them, they brought their own sensibilities and their own colors.
Any anecdotes from the shoot?
It was a tough shoot. Tenerife is an island, you are isolated. There’s only one road that goes all around it, it’s very windy, the weather is constantly changing. We put Rebecca through wind, rain, underwater, cold, she really tasted the whole palette of physical states. But she was a warrior. She went full-on.
You’ve mentioned Ducournau, Lanthimos, Glazer as references. Where does The End of It sit in that landscape?
It’s a sci-fi, it’s a family drama, it’s a dark comedy. Existential, but approached with a light touch, without forgetting the absurdity of living. I also love Buñuel, Ruben Östlund, Todd Haynes. What connects all of them for me is not genre but voice. If you ask me what genre I prefer, I prefer films. The ones where you feel that somebody specific is telling you the story.
