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THE AGES OF LULÚ. Bigas Luna (La línea del vientre, Gijón Festival 1992).

LAS EDADES DE LULÚ 2

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.

LAS EDADES DE LULÚ 3

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.