“The Birthday Gift” may open with a shot of broken ice covering Lake Michigan, but a cold front is moving in on the night of the birthday for Soledad (Paula Pizzi), who is already on edge because her son-in-law Marty (Nate Santana) didn’t pick up sparkling water for an important dinner. Just how important will come as a surprise when César (Ignacio Serrichio), a man Soledad just met at church shows up with Carolina (Margarita Lamas), an elderly guest, and while she appears woozy upon walking in, easily dismissed as part of her advanced age by the group, there’s something else about the room that throws her off-balance as she locks eyes with Gabriela (Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel), Soledad’s daughter.
Memories of Argentina unite them when Gabriela and Soledad entertain with music from the old country on the chilly night in Chicago, but their roots abroad end up having the potential to entangle them to the point of strangulation in the dramatic short from director Arianna Ortiz and writers Pizzi and Stephanie Alison Walker, who based the film on her play “The Abuelas.” Although Soledad wants to keep the evening casual as the wine flows and she even finds the courage to perform the famous tango “El Choclo,” a recollection regarding the Dirty War of the 1970s in which thousands were disappeared under military dictatorship rears its ugly head, leading to the realization that the dinner guests may be connected in ways they couldn’t have imagined as they look increasingly far apart at the dinner table. It isn’t only the fact that the sun is going down outside that makes the night turn darker as the gathering goes into the wee hours, the film keeps the conversation lively with taut direction by Ortiz and a fierce cast that dances around the truth of why César and Carolina have shown up until it becomes inevitable to emerge.
When it’s reach as a play was limited, the adaptation of “The Abuelas” is now turning movie theaters into stages with all the energy of live theater as “The Birthday Gift” has begun its festival run, kicking off with a recent premiere at the Cleveland Film Festival and as the short makes its way to Los Angeles this week as part of the L.A. Latino Film Festival, Ortiz spoke about committing Walker’s work to the big screen with plans already to expand the short into a feature, creating a dynamic drama out of the single-setting film and recognizing that all she needed for a juicy drama was often right in front of her.
How did this come about?
I’ve been an actor for a very long time and still am, so I have a very long working history and creative collaboration with a playwright named Stephanie Allison Walker. I’ve been a part of the development of three of her plays and in the world premiere of two of them and I was a part of the development of this incredibly beautiful play called “The Abuelas,” [which] world premiered in Chicago. Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel, who is the star of “The Birthday Gift,” was in that production and Cruz and I did not know each other, but she was in Chicago hounding Stephanie for years to adapt her work to the screen, and I’m in Los Angeles hounding Stephanie for years to adapt her work to the screen. [laughs] Somehow Cruz finally convinced her, “Let’s just start with the proof of concept and then we’ll move on to the feature,” which is what we’re doing now. And because I’m a writer and filmmaker in my own right, and [Stephanie and I have been] friends for a long time, Steph reached out to me with the script and [asked], “Can I get your thoughts on this?” I gave them notes and they really took the notes beautifully and we instantly just started collaborating, so [I asked], “Who’s directing this and why is it me?” I basically thrust myself upon them, which they loved and we’ve been going ever since.
The film stands on its own, but what was it like figuring out a short version of it when you had a feature already in mind?
The short is based on the full-length play, but it is changing a bit simply because what happens in the play is not exactly what happens in the short film. The short was like an incredible exercise in how can we tell this portion of the story in as short a time, but in as compelling a way as possible and we already know this incredible story. We already know what happens to Gabriela, the main character, and Cruz played this role on stage, so she’s bringing a character that she knows very very well to the screen and part of the reason I think the short is resonating so well is that layers of story and character are already built in that I don’t think you often get in short films.
But it’s an interesting challenge when adapting a play to the screen because there are all kinds of traps. A lot of plays, especially intimate, grounded plays, are really just people talking, so how do you take that and you make it cinematic? For me, the key was [the setting]. They’re in one of the coldest, windiest cities in the middle of winter, and yet they’re having this really warm, inviting, lovely time at this dinner, so I [thought], “Let’s invite the audience in. Let’s show the audience how cold it is outside. And then welcome them into this wonderful dinner party and have a great time and there’s tango and there’s wine and chocotorta only then to reveal to them that they’ve actually entered a crucible.” It was a wonderful challenge.
It seems like you’re able to really use the shortcut of great production design, which has so much detail in it. What was it like to work on this house?
It’s hiring the right department heads. We had an incredible Chicago-based production designer named Lalo Ayala and a wonderful director of photography, Christopher Rejano. Everybody that read the script, it resonated with them so powerfully that there was just this hunger for people to be involved and because we’re telling a story about an Argentine family in Chicago, but they’re also American characters, the authenticity was really, really vital. So from production design to the actors — those are all Argentine actors — and we scoured the entertainment industry looking for the right actors. Everyone was just so committed to authenticity and we got really lucky because we ended up shooting at the writer’s house because we were looking for a very specific kind of space and we walked into her space one day and we [thought], “Oh, wait a minute. We think this is it. Why were we looking everywhere else? It’s right here.” It worked so beautifully with this wintry color palette that we were building. It was a little challenge in post-production to keep that the color palette and at the same time bring in warmth because I really wanted the party to be warm and inviting, but I also wanted to keep those blue walls.
As far as the actors, you obviously didn’t have to look far for Cruz or Paula Pizzi, who is also credited as a writer, but how’d you get the group together for this?
Yeah, Paula, who plays Soledad, was also very passionate about this. Paula, Cruz and Stephanie and I all have been working with Stephanie for years individually and then we all came together and bonded over this project. I think Paula’s performance in particular really just sends us flying, not to give away the ending. She’s remarkable and the trickiest character to cast you would think would be Carolina, but that’s played by Margarita Lamas, who I had done Stephanie’s play “The Madres” with, so I knew that all I had to do was put the camera on her and that her presence would just fill up the screen, even though she was complaining, “I only have four lines.” [laughs] And then the biggest challenge was finding our César, which was Ignacio Serrichio and all credit goes to Cruz because she was just reaching out, going on Instagram and DM’ing every Argentine actor that she could find who would be right for the role. Ignacio really stepped up to the challenge and met with our casting person and as soon as we got into that callback with Ignacio, [I thought] “We’ve got ‘em.” Everyone working really hard as a team and also inviting in the things that you need in order to tell the story.
Was the balance of Spanish and English always there from the script stage, or was that something that you could work out with the actors as this was progressing?
It’s why Paula’s collaboration is so vital. Paula and Cruz are both Argentine and Argentine Spanish is very, very specific. It’s a very specific accent, and there’s a specific conjugation in Argentine Spanish that they don’t have in other forms of Spanish. When I was in Argentina studying Spanish, I would have to have somebody repeat things three times because it would take me a minute. So it was really important that we had a script supervisor who could understand and track it all. The language is such a vital form of representation showing any Latino household that may be bilingual. My father, for example, didn’t want me to speak Spanish. He was like, “You’re my American daughter, so you speak English,” and that’s such a wonderful thing about character of Marty because Nate Santana, who plays Marty is a Latino of Puerto Rican descent and does not speak Spanish and I love that representation of somebody who’s like, “Wait, what’s what’s happening?” He represents the audience in that way. Weaving in the language is a vital part of the authenticity of the story. Also, the presence of music in the film —Gabriela is a cellist and all the cello was played live on set. There’s no score in the movie because we realized we didn’t need it. Language brings in this layer of musicality, going from Spanish to English and it was just building on the musicality that’s already [there].
Did Paula insist on the moment that she sang in? It’s quite a scene in the film.
She was so great. She was actually nervous about it but we were like, “You get to pick the song,” and she loves “El Choclo.” But then you have to deal with like music rights issues, so we had to get very, very creative and it was a process. But you can tell she had a lot of fun with it.
I always wonder coming from an acting background, was there anything that you gave to the actors you’d want yourself from a director? For instance, the energy of the film is pretty great in general and when you’ve got four people sitting around a table for a lot of this, did you try and keep scenes going rather than break it up into pieces to shoot different sides?
I very much wanted to invite the audience into this dinner party, and especially when you’re when you’re doing a film that’s a chamber piece like this where people are just sitting and talking, there’s a threat of it just being static. But we’re in a dinner party and they’re moving through the room and [every actor] doesn’t have to always be on screen. We can feel the sense of movement, so it was a lot of work, but it was nice, especially with the dancing and the music, that once we get to the actual dinner scene, we were able to just be still. A lot of thought went into it.
And because I’m an actor, I understand actors very, very well. I know what they need. Some of them might meet need more affirmation than I’m used to even dealing with myself. But it gave me a shorthand because I’ve certainly collaborated with a lot of directors who don’t feel confident in how they communicate with actors, so I could just be like, “Okay, let’s run the dialogue. You go.” Because if we’re shooting something in one shot, which in the early parts of the movie, it’s just camera’s here, it moves, and we’re out, so it’s like we have to treat this scene like a play. The pacing has to be good. We’re not doing any edits, so let’s get the energy of it down.” I’m able to work really fast with the actors in that way.
Then when we were shooting the most emotionally and challenging parts of the movie, everyone on the crew’s working long hours and they’re getting tired at the end of the day, but you’re trying to get this one crucial moment and as soon as I would call “cut” on something, everyone would be tittering and talking and we’d be like, “Okay, we’ve got to hold the room because we’re going to go right into it because we’ve got to get it.” That’s holding the energy for the actors, because I know what it’s like to be somebody who’s performing and the crew’s around and lights and you can see everything’s there, yet you want to hold your focus and do the best work you possibly can. So I would like to think that I was able to hold the space for the actors.
What’s it been like sharing this with audiences so far?
We had our world premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival and the audiences were amazing. The whole core team made it out and it was really, really satisfying to watch the film with an audience and to hear their reaction. The film ends and the whole room is [quiet], so that was really exciting. It’s such hard work to make any film — a short, a feature, you name it — and now we’re about to screen at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival and I’m very much looking forward to experiencing it with an audience again, especially a Latino audience. That should be exciting.
“The Birthday Gift” next screens at the L.A. Latino Film Festival on May 28th at 9:30 pm at the TCL Chinese Theaters Auditorium 3.