An accomplished editor of recent films of Lisandro Alonzo and Carlos Reygadas, not to mention starring in the latter’s “Our Time,” it was only a matter of time before Natalia Lopez Gallardo directed one of her own, but even more so than most, it was going to mean something when she did.
“To make a film, you have to have a profound necessity to do it,” said Lopez Gallardo, short after the premiere of her feature debut “Robe of Gems.” “That necessity becomes a strong impulse that is going to push you all across, so I think I fed that desire and that desire becomes a necessity through time.”
Lopez Gallardo has been working towards “Robe of Gems” for as long as she’s lived in the Mexican countryside, feeling helpless over the past decade-and-a-half as families have had to endure the potential for their loved ones to disappear and held by one of the cartels as a fact of daily life. For residents desperate to know where their relatives are, Lopez Gallardo fashions a fittingly fragmented narrative around three women who are all suffering losses recently in different ways, whether it’s Isabel (Nailea Norvind), a recent divorcee who has recently moved into the country, her housekeeper Maria (Antonia Olivares), whose sister has gone missing, or the local police chief Roberta (Aida Roa), who looks for Maria’s sister while fighting as hard as she can to avoid losing her own son (Juan Daniel García Treviño) to a local gang.
Rich in details but equally impressive for how carefully Lopez Gallardo doles them out, “Robe of Gems” is gripping for how it conveys the unknown, allowing the dangerous thoughts that fill the minds of Isabel, Maria and Roberta fill the void when information is difficult to come by. Still, every frame is packed with particulars about a community living in fear, often letting the long takes that lets the totality of dread and uncertainty settle in through astounding long takes while centering the humanity of the characters in surreal situations, with the threat of being completely desensitized looming large. The filmmaker simply won’t allow that to happen with how she follows the flow of emotions in “Robe of Gems” and shortly after the film’s premiere at Berlinale, she spoke about tapping into the realities of the region, the film’s effective diversionary tactics and how directing made her a better person.
How did this come about?
It came from a lot of places and it’s a film that seems like a constellation somehow and I wrote without asking why. As you must have perceived, it’s not a film based on narrative, but more in another element of the cinematic language and casting for me is a really, really important process – as important as writing the script and as important as finding the locations. It was a long and deep process and the film was born during that period, when I drove a lot around Morelos, the state where I live and I talked with people during those journeys and I remember very well the interviews I had with mothers and fathers that had missing children and I remember well also the feeling I had after those interviews. It was a feeling of something very uncomfortable that I [would] define it later as a kind of guilt. I felt the possibility of feeling what the other was feeling somehow and that was the point of departure. Also, I felt I was participating in this cycle somehow and not participating doing something concrete, but not doing anything to stop it.
One of the most magnificent points in the film is a long, single take at the police station where you’re able to touch on all of these different experiences as you see people reporting their missing persons cases. What was it like constructing that moment?
Yeah, I talked a lot with the cinematographer [Adrian Durazo] about that scene and we considered together as a traveling [shot]. The creative team supported me a lot because I wanted to construct all the time with sound, [which] I feel very comfortable when I work with because sound is an ambiguous element. It always brings a perspective that you can interpret somehow. It isn’t like vision where things are concrete and puts limits on things. I wanted to construct a crazy symphony with voices and names and tales about missing people and about places – and Adrian, the cinematographer and I thought about the camera searching in that place and hearing things that you are not seeing all the time.
The film is based in what you see and what you don’t see and what you hear and don’t hear and if you’re seeing something, you are hearing another thing. That’s the language of the universe of the film, so [generally] it was difficult to find the balance. Sometimes I was afraid about not giving enough elements to construct in the imagination of the spectator somehow, but I trust the cinematic language and I trust the viewer that is active, a viewer that takes cinema as an experience.
One big measure of confidence seemed to be doing these takes you couldn’t cut away from, especially when you’ve got a largely nonprofessional cast like this. Did your editing experience give you strength on set in that sense?
No, because I’m trained to take things off. [laughs] I’m trained to cut and not feel anything about it. So not really. But it was a vast situation and a lot of characters, so if I wanted to be a little more precise about the concept I wanted to transmit and the ideas, I had to focus in certain situations that combined and make a third result. So I cut a lot, and you have to remember I’m a debutante in this position, so I wrote more than I needed. And casting was not only to find the person that could perform in a fantastic way, but people with whom you can communicate in an open manner and that is not easy. You’re testing yourself as a person somehow and seeing if you can communicate with this person, so of course you’re looking for a certain energy, a certain presence, a certain social frame, but [more so] people that can be open with you and you can be open with them.
Working in that way, were there things you may not have anticipated, but could embrace as the film took on a life of its own?
As a filmmaker, you are always wanting the unexpected because we are trying to construct something that we cannot construct [in real life], so we put all the elements there and we pick all of them in a very precise way – colors, dresses, lights and movement of the camera – we decide everything, and then we expect something to happen, but we don’t know what it is somehow. It’s a mystery – that’s cinema. And most of the time, you fail. But when you’re looking through the camera and see the face of the actor, you’re always expecting her doing something that you don’t know. A lot of details are in the film that were unexpected and a big lesson that I learned from someone is that the more you plan, the more you can be free and the more you can recognize the unexpected and [either] discard or integrate it. So you think a lot about the film and about what you want to transmit, and if you’re lucky, something happens.
Seems it was a little more than luck here and even though it’s your first feature as a director, you have a wealth of experience coming in. Still, it’s such a big achievement, what’s it like to have this under your belt?
You have the Damocles’ sword at your neck all the time. [laughs] Yeah, it’s an absolutely different experience and all the good and all the bad and everything depends on you, so you are in a very fragile situation all the time. But what I’m living now I’m didn’t believe before as an editor or as an actress. It was a brand new experience – as a human too because as a director, you learn a lot about human communication.
“Robe of Gems” will screen at Berlinale on February 14th at 3 pm at Cubix 9, February 17th at 9 pm at International and February 20th at 3 pm at Cubix 5 and 6.