Chloé Wallace: “A camera weighs like a four-year-old child and no one considers whether a woman can pick it up” | Pleasures | S Fashion

Her name is Chloé María Wallace del Barrio. She is half American, half Spanish. She grew up in the mountains of Madrid, she has lived in London, New York and Los Angeles and a couple of years ago she returned to Madrid. She says that at the age of five she became obsessed with The Wizard of Oz: “Toward performances “With my dog ​​and the hoop, I dressed up…” Now, about to turn 30 (she will be on August 24) she has already published a book (Hello, stranger, with the publisher Wash), directed a series (A perfect story, which triumphed on Netflix) and a movie (Bad influence, now in assembly phase). At 13 I had a Blog, then he made a newsletter. “I have always been very precocious, when I started directing I had just turned 20. And I am also a very ambitious person. I was always in a hurry, I haven’t been very patient. “I was very clear about what I wanted to do,” she reflects. He explains things quickly, overlaps phrases, wants to say many things. That ambition has been his driving force; he has been saying for years that one day he will aspire to an Oscar. “I have never felt it as something negative, thanks to my mother. I think that when women talked about his ambition, they didn’t do it in a negative way, but she portrayed herself from another place. If a man is, nothing is said to him.”

“In my head the word ‘everything’ has always sounded captivating. Appetizing Everything, being able to do everything, even if you end up doing nothing,” Wallace writes in Hello, stranger. In its 283 pages it opens: account that he suffered bullying from the age of 7 to 13, how she discovered her bisexuality, that at 18 she was diagnosed with bulimia, that sometimes she is very happy and aware of her luck, but at the same time she cries and feels terrible. Has anything been saved? “Familiar things that are hard to touch, darker things. Now I feel that the book is about a stage in my life, from when I was as a nomad and looking for the idea of ​​home,” she notes. His first interest was music, he studied flute at the conservatory; She then thought about being an actress, but she discarded it, she decided to get behind the lens, she started as a photographer and then directed advertising and now cinema. “It’s easier to hide behind the camera,” she argues, “to be in front of it is to be very vulnerable.” That position is the one her sister, Nicole Wallace, has chosen. (Skam, My fault, Not one more), which he aspires to direct soon. “I would like to do a personal project, a movie”, he advances, “in one of the ideas that I have a role is for her, she has been my muse for a thousand years, we have a connection that I will never have with anyone.”

Until now he has directed on commission. The romantic comedy A Perfect Tale was based on a book by Elísabet Benavent and Bad Influence mixes romance and thriller inspired by a Wattpad novel by Teenspirit. “The label ‘girl things’ continues to carry a lot of weight in society, with critics and within the industry. It also happens with mainstream, It happened with Barbie, with these phenomena that are making a lot of money, giving a lot of work and working very well. But I believe that the concept has been taken and is being vindicated: well, long live girl things, they are the best things in the world, long live women. I think women are capable of doing it.” Even so, he admits that the categories of high and low culture continue to weigh: “There is still a lot of prejudice towards romantic comedies, towards directing things mainstream…I’m the first. My dream has never been to direct a Wattpad novel, it was to do something indie, author, plus I have just completed a master’s degree at NYU (New York University), where everything is author, the love of art and suffering in art… But I believe that you can create a world in which, why No? The two things can be compatible. I always think of Nora Ephron, who is an incredible writer but she was supermainstream.”

Within this wake of breaking stereotypes, he recognizes that he does not understand the image of the director who pushes the team to the limit. In her last shoot she shared tiktoks with technicians and actors, dancing, having fun. “I was thinking a lot about what kind of director I want to be, how to communicate with the team. And I have realized that the best thing is for people to be close to you, to go to work happy,” she emphasizes. In Bad influence A large part of the team has been made up of women, from its co-writer to the director of photography. “It’s something I always try to look for, because the energy is very different. When I started I planned to be I will say photo and there were no references, they told you that the equipment weighs a lot, but a camera weighs like a four-year-old child. And no one cares if a woman can hold a child, but the camera can.”

Has the industry changed since MeToo? “A lot of progress has been made, I think we are on a very good path, but the truth is that there is still a lack of internal communication and structure for women,” she laments. “As a result of Carlos Vermut, I am very aware that as a director you have a lot of power over your team,” she says, and she says she is “a little disappointed, because there are rumors about actors and directors in the industry and people continue working with these people”. She herself shared on Instagram an experience of sexual harassment years ago with a director: “I have neither said her name nor was I looking for a public cancellation, but I felt frustrated. Following the post People who had experienced similar situations wrote to me. You have to be aware of who you work with and who you want to interact with.”

She is very clear about the people with whom she would like to share projects in the future: “Silma López, Fernando Valdivielso, Claudia Traisac… I have a lot of very talented friends.” She, along with many of them, hopes to be able to celebrate her birthday in August. She will prepare them dirty gin martinis and rhum punch, her star cocktails. She feels that she has finally come home, like Dorothy. Following the yellow brick road.