Jonás Trueba, in his Cannes debut: “When you are most stunned, saddest, you need to laugh a little” | Culture

Jonás Trueba (Madrid, 42 years old) sits on the stretch of La Croisette beach where the artists participating in the Filmmakers’ Fortnight carry out their promotions, and point-blank confesses his discomfort. The posture, the sand, the question? “No, because of the movie. I’m not convinced, I doubt her. In fact, when I saw it for the first time in its entirety, it seemed like a film by a depressed director telling the story of two depressed characters trying to make themselves not so depressed,” he says. And yet, You will return, his eighth film, it is a comedy. Self-parody, incisive and playful even in its premise: a lifelong couple decides that to celebrate their separation they are going to throw a big party, against the opinion of those around them. You will return participates in the Filmmakers’ Fortnight, which is Trueba’s first presence in Cannes.

The thing is that Jonás Trueba has been involved for years in the project about the group Los Planetas that Isaki Lacuesta has finally directed with the title of Second prize, and for the Madrid native, his departure—voluntary, due to clashes with the band over the script—left him somewhat knocked out. “When you are most numb, most sad, you need to laugh a little. The film comes from that feeling, right? I had just abandoned that film, and luckily we have been able to recover from that whole strange situation, and start writing another movie and making it in less than a year.” Trueba speaks in plural, because he co-signs the script with the two leading actors. All in all, does it point to healing him through cinema? “It has been healing, true. I like to think that movies also help you shake things off.”

In You will return, the couple that make up a film director (Itsaso Arana, alter ego de Trueba) and an actor (Vito Sanz) decide that to close their 15-year relationship they will heed an old advice from the bride’s father: in case of breakup, celebrate in style. Trueba mixes his real-world friendships with film ones, like Francesco Carril, who plays an actor who is working on his series (they filmed on the actual filming of The new years, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen), or his own father, Fernando Trueba, as the director’s father. Even the house in which this character lives is very similar (but not the same) to that of the Trueba family. “Everything fits in naturally, and what’s more, the boutade of the party really occurred to my father. And I was very clear that I wanted him to embody it a little in the wake of the classic Hollywood comedy, that the one who matters is the father of the bride. During the filming he made the entire team laugh, he is very given to witticisms, and it was a joy.” His concern actually came from Jonás Trueba’s obsession with “capturing the essence of people, something very difficult to achieve in a film, and I think I have achieved it.”

When I saw it for the first time in its entirety, it seemed like a film about a depressed director telling the story of two depressed characters trying to make themselves not so depressed.”

You will return It talks about more things, and one is a very attractive paradox for its creator. “The couple is separating, in the middle of that very forceful gerund, and they enter into the contradiction that at the same time they are organizing something, there is a common objective,” Trueba reflects. And of course there will be a party: “In my films I have always set out to force myself towards joy. Better that than the opposite, right?, which is common in current cinema, where directors take the plot into darkness. I want you to leave the cinema with the desire to live. The same thing is a utopia, that making films that improve life a little is impossible. However, on screen you can allow yourself things that in real life I wouldn’t dare.” And hence the party: “For years I have blurted out that idea about my father to friends who broke up, about those couples that you adore and when they separate you are upset… Anyway, everyone looked at me badly, except for a few. , who thought a lot about it and almost did it.”

exorcising demons

Does a breakup serve to exorcise demons with your own life? Is it useful to show Itsaso Arana separating in the cinema so that the Trueba-Arana relationship is maintained in real life? “In the end you go through the idea while shooting the film, it becomes a real experience and you get scared. On the other hand, that’s how you scare him away, right?

Jonás Trueba is retained. “I just don’t want to sound pedantic,” he recoils. However, You will return, a highly crafted film in form and substance, talks about a moment and a people, and the filmmaker ends up freeing himself. “I understand filmmaking as a time to bring friends together and portray them, and that may be why my films look like portraits. Actually, this is our Fellini 8 1/2, because both are films about crises and created from the crisis, and in which we summon our ghosts.” And he also approaches the omnipresent Truffaut (about whom there is also a joke in the film): “Yes, I have thought about Stolen kisses, because like this, Truffaut raises the film from a smallness. Cinema can be sustained with elements of everyday life, even with a joke. The romantic exiles “It was born from a drunken night, from some nonsense, and then we took it seriously.”

Cinema can be sustained with elements of everyday life, even with a joke”

Trueba stands up. He appreciates the congratulations on the work, which does not leave behind his hesitations: “Of all my films, this is the one that has caused me the greatest dissatisfaction. It’s okay to say it, because it seems that we have to promote films only in a positive way. We wrote and shot very quickly, instinctively. And in the editing I became aware of a series of things. I no longer know to what extent the film was like that or is it just me and my own crisis with cinema. Normally, with the films I have made I am happy because I know that they are more or less coherent, honest and regular. I am calm with them. Maybe this current doubt has to do with the moment in my life, I’m getting older, things are getting complicated…” And the sand is shaken.

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