Filming "Lulú" was a great although
difficult experience, for personal reasons. It was a difficult
assignment, a professional challenge, and yet I would do it again,
even though everything became complicated later on because of the
Molina affair and because of my father's death. At first, I thought
it was impossible, that I wouldn't be able to do it, but then I
said to myself: "I must dare to go ahead." So I did it…and it
worked. It was what the producer had proposed to me from the
beginning: "We are going to be very successful." It hasn't caused
me any trauma, not even from the harshness of some reviews. Reviews
have always treated me very well. In fact, I am where I am today
thanks to film reviews. So, if one of them turns out to be
negative, well, I can take it...
I am very glad about "Lulú." It was
a film I took on with a certain fear. The problem was whether the
public would believe a story in which the characters spend ninety
minutes doing the same thing. It's a story about people who start
off screwing and end up screwing. Because, of course, in the book
you read that they are having sex then, you put it down and pick it
up the next day. But in a film, you see it all at once. And that
causes a big credibility problem, which I think I have solved; in
that sense it works. Look, I have a female cousin who watches all
of my films, although more out of family commitment than for any
other reason, and she said to me: "It's a very shocking film,
that's for sure, and the worse thing is that you must have had to
hang around with these people and go to all those creepy places."
Of course, she was referring to the sadomasochistic scenes at the
end of the film. The funny thing is, all those who appear in it are
actors.
Having done that film hasn't
frustrated me because right from the start I had a very clear idea
of what it was about. Of all the films I've made, it is the one
that people talk to me the most about, despite the fact that the
subject matter is rather difficult to deal with; the subject of
eroticism. Many people experience the same problem as those who
read the novel; they've read it but they're embarrassed to say they
liked it.
The producer would tell me that the
movie wasn't going to be as successful as we expected because many
people weren't going to go to see it. By contrast, the video has
sold really well. I understand the fact that the reviews have been
so negative, what the fuck! I even somehow agree with many of them,
but one can also praise the film. And I have no problem in praising
it myself. In fact, I am delighted to have made it. For me it was
an exercise. It hasn't been of much consequence for my career, but
it was important that I dared to make it.
There are things in "Lulú" that are
almost a miracle. For example, the way Francesca Neri develops the
character of the role she plays. And then, the film contains some
of my most important sequences in terms of narrative pathos. The
sequence of María Barranco as a transvestite gives me goose bumps
every time I see it, even though I made the film myself! Everything
about the pathos, the loneliness, the affection of the
transvestites is explained in that scene. Because that's what they
are like: a transvestite is a person that has been created, a
person who makes herself with one sole objective: sex. They are a
human invention, and everything that is human about them and all
the pathos about them is explained there. Why do people want them?
To jerk off, that's why.
For that sequence alone, the film
is worthwhile for me. But then there is also the world of
sadomasochism, and that definitely is an invention of mine: never
in my life have I gone to an S&M show. I'm delighted to have
invented that shabby underworld of mattresses and jogging suits,
based on the plot of the novel but which belongs to me visually.
The only reference I had to recreate such an atmosphere was French
tackiness because there are no more precedents to all that French
stuff, like the shining leather, plastic and that woman
Valentina... It is something I'm not interested in at all, so I
made a personal contribution in terms of esthetics that is
important for me and which consists of recreating a sadomasochistic
world that is totally Spanish. I don't know if anything else might
come out of it in due course, but anyway, there it is in case
anybody wants to pick it up. Then, I also like the credits a lot.
It's just a joke, of course, but I like it. It is the summary of
the film. You see, the film is nothing else but that.
If I can and if I feel strong
enough, I want to make many movies. I understand that everybody
wants me to make another film like "Bilbao", but if I devoted
myself exclusively to making Bilbao-like movies I'd be dead by now,
right? Besides I don't feel like doing just that. There are more
than enough people in this country who only make one single film.
There are films of mine that have marked an entire era (for
example, "Bilbao", "Poodle" and "Anguish", my three key films).
Then there are other things like "Lulú": I should make more films
like that one or, to be more precise, they should ask me to make
more films like that one. I'd be happy if I were asked to make that
sort of film even if I didn't actually shoot them subsequently.
"Lulú" has had excellent reviews in
Germany and Italy. But here, in Spain, it generated too many
expectations. We held a big press conference, in Isabel Pantoja
fashion. Had I wanted to make a "Lulú" in Biga Luna style, it would
have been a mistake. I had to respect the world of this story and
the producer's intentions. You cannot deceive a producer. What I
actually did was to add certain ingredients that weren't there at
the beginning (the transvestite thing and the sadomasochistic
stuff). The rest was a matter of narrating something and making it
work. And the actress made it work just fine… she definitely
did.
BIGAS LUNA.