Aida Folch, Fernando Trueba’s cinematic daughter: “I trust him blindly” | Culture

Aida Folch (Reus, 37 years old) is quietly having a coffee in the centre of Madrid. She has been an actress for longer, two decades, than an anonymous person. However, she happily celebrates that people don’t really know who she is. “I have never suffered a boom because of a series of teenagers or something like that. I have had more popularity, like in the years of Tell me how it happened, of Loving in troubled times and Mothers. I sound familiar to them, but they don’t really know where I am. I get on the subway, walk around and receive the love and respect of everyone I meet on the street. For me, that’s the ideal,” she reflects. She smiles. “I need to be connected to life, to talk to people. If I didn’t and had to hide, everything would end.”

Without much fanfare on social networks, nor media partners, Folch has been accumulating work since Fernando Trueba chose that 14-year-old teenager to star in The spell of Shanghai —which finally premiered in 2002—. He would repeat it a decade later in The artist and the model, and now tripite (although he also had a cameo in The Queen of Spain) in Lost Island, a drama with a certain film noir tone in a restaurant in a Greek enclave run by a chef (Matt Dillon) and where a Spanish woman arrives at the beginning of the 21st century to rebuild her life. “My character is open to life. He comes from an emotional background, but like all of us, we have suffered, in sentimental or family matters when we are of a certain age.”

A few days ago, in Babelia, Folch confessed that she loves David Attenborough’s documentaries, whom she sees as “almost like another grandfather.” So, what is Trueba for her? “My cinematic father!” she bursts out. “He is family. I trust him blindly. In each film he offers me a new challenge that makes me grow as a person.” Beyond the interpretive challenge, in The artist and the model The actress had to speak French, and now she has to do it in English with words in Greek. “Fernando was worried that I would have a posh British accent, because I work a lot on every element, I mechanize it. He was afraid that my English would sound fake, and I told him that it was the opposite, that I work hard so that it would seem natural.”

Her work as a pick and shovel, she points out during the talk, is born from the fact that she always wanted to be an actress. As a child she studied theatre at Llop’s Teatre as an extracurricular activity, to which she added, on Saturdays, acting at the Reading Centre in her hometown. “In 2001 I filmed The spell of Shanghai, and a few months later, Mondays in the sun. I had been told that the important thing was to be natural and suddenly I noticed that Javier Bardem spoke differently and walked differently in front of the camera. I didn’t understand it. Because it’s not natural, he was just doing his acting thing. Even today I like to observe and see how my colleagues work. For example, Matt (Dillon) surprised me, because he’s not a technical actor, but more organic, more chaotic… I suppose that’s how they would shoot on their day. Rebels”, remember.

And what are Folch’s “actress things” like? “I am very organized. I have often been told as a joke that there is no prize for the best stationery on a shoot because of my collection of notes, sticks… For me it is very important continuity “I work a lot before I get to the shoot with previous practices that I have learned and that help me to forget about everything on the shoot.” The actress studied Photography in artistic high school and has studied editing. Would you like to direct? “It’s a big deal. I mean, I try, I write. I would like to direct, but my energy is not totally focused on that, because suddenly a job comes up and I go to it. The time has not come for me, but seeing what my colleagues who are in the same situation are achieving encourages me. The editing? I find it very creative, but the technological aspect… I like being with the film crew, and participating in what they let me.” She returns to the beginning of her answer: “Actors are people who have lived, who have read many scripts and been on many shoots. We know how to express ourselves and in general we can understand stories in a very personal way. That’s why we jumped into directing.”

Despite her long career, Folch insists that she has also spent months without receiving a professional call: “At first you take advantage and do courses that you like. Then, you see your bank account dwindling and it comes in… Luckily, they have called me again, so I have not had to, for example, put drinks in. I do feel that I am shooting fewer films each time. And yet, I am privileged. Many friends tell me that I am lucky, that those who appear in series would like to shoot films, to appear on the big screen with great authors like those we have in Spain. I would also like to film more… and to be called for a play. It seems that we can choose our careers and sometimes you achieve it. Other times you don’t, other times you just get by and whatever appears appears and you decide. We are not stars, we are workers.”

Is this explosion of series born from the rise of audiovisual platforms? “If there hadn’t been platforms, I don’t know if I would be working. We are who we are, the films that are made are made and it’s good to work. There is also a negative side, such as the control of their projects, their way of doing things, focused more on the product than on art. It is even a bit bureaucratic in some aspects. Everything has its good side and its bad side.”

In two decades of work, Folch has navigated all kinds of sets and shoots. Some happy ones: he still stays with the team of 25 carats, which premiered 15 years ago. In other cases, he witnessed abuses of power. “It is assumed that with all the information we have and the re-education we are all attending, it should be reduced,” he begins to explain. “Even so, there are people who have not yet realized what the whole thing is about. And there are also generations that do not understand how things are changing. In short, the things that are important change slowly.” He concludes: “There are grey situations, of two people who understand what happened in a different way. Others are flagrant. The other day I saw the documentary about Kevin Spacey’s behavior at the recording of House of Cards and everyone knew what was going on. But he was the star of the show. So what do we do? Nothing was done in that case, and it happens everywhere. It’s complicated. And it shouldn’t happen, but…

Folch admits that he is very happy living in the physical landscape of Madrid and not so much in a digital world where social networks rule. “I tried for a while, and I discovered that I am not good at it. I have been advised to appear on them more, because it is true that they move money. And it is legitimate to sign up for that, but I am not… It seems very complicated to be a young performer today, forced to attend to all those worlds. I see them from my place in another generation and I feel very far away. I have not done so badly with my style of career, have I? Well, let me follow this path.”