Interview with Julio Medem

Interview by Sean Axmaker, 30 August 2002

The films of Spain’s Julio Medem are as much about his country’s distinctive landscapes and natural mysteries as they are about the restless and obsessive characters that wander through his world. Vacas (Cows) (1992), his debut feature, is set in the rolling hills and thick forests of Northern Spain, where two clans feud and flirt through the three generations between the Carlist Wars of 1875 and the devastating Spanish Civil War, and seen through the dull, unimpressed eyes of ever present cows. The Red Squirrel (1993), a dense mind game of cinematic delights, is a squirrel’s eye view of a relationship built quite literally on a complex web of lies and deceptions spun in a remote forest campground. Tierra (Earth) (1995), to date his most vital and vivid work, begins in the heavens and lands in the red dust of a remote wine growing region, a world both primal and alien where the enigmatic wood lice lives underground and angels live among the humans above.

Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998) brought his work to larger international audience. Swooning with romantic abandon, Julio Medem’s fateful love story weaves reality, fantasy and memory into a narrative tapestry of recurring images like musical motifs as two frustrated lovers narrate their own stories in parallel self-titled chapters and offer dream variations one another’s stories. With Lovers Medem established himself firmly, in this critic’s mind at least, as the most engaging and exciting filmmaker to come out of Spain since Carlos Saura -- and that includes Pedro Almodovar. His unique, organic style is a different kind of cinematic experience. Medem doesn’t direct so much as weave his films: distinctive landscapes, fumbling characters, criss-crossing stories and recurring images and motifs intertwine, blur, and transform through time. His films burst with narrative games, visual puns, and a passionate embrace of fate, fantasy, and the illogical power of love.

Medem came to Seattle in June of 2002 with the local premiere of his fifth and most recent film, Sex and Lucia, his latest tale of obsessive love, tragic twists, and romantic fate. This densely plotted, time-hopping drama once again weaves the criss-crossing stories of a handful of characters through primal landscapes (a deserted, sun-washed Mediterranean island beach, the dark caves that snake through the center of the island) and emotional trials, and reverberates with the thematic foundation of all of Medem’s stories: we don’t exist in a vacuum. Our lives affect others, and that gives us a responsibility. For the record, the film earned him the festival’s audience award for Best Director and Best Screenplay.

I had the great pleasure and honor of interviewing Julio Medem while he was in Seattle to be honored as an "Emerging Master" at the Seattle International Film Festival, ten years after SIFF give the American premiere to his debut feature Vacas. As far as I was concerned he had emerged years ago, but the honor was really just an excuse to bring a world class director to Seattle to talk about his films. The 42 year old director spoke a little English in our brief introduction but when it came to the interview he spoke in Spanish through interpreter Carolina Manriquez. The result reads less like an interview than a series of creative reflections, so I’ve structured it that way.

On Tierra:

The character of Angel in Tierra had been written for Antonio Banderas, who had originally agreed to make the movie but then declined, and I had written the character of Patricio [the husband of the Emma Suarez character) for Carmelo, because Carmelo’s dad was a farmer and it was a world he knew. Carmelo was all set to do that character, so when Banderas dropped out of the movie I had to talk Carmelo into being Angel. He didn’t want to be Angel because he was so focused on Patricio, the character that had been written for him, the character he was meant to be. It was hard work to convince him to take the role of Angel.

Obviously the character had to change. The way the character is built is both through my vision and the actor’s interpretation of that vision. Their own identity comes into play while they build and create this character. If the actor changes the character has to change because he brings all his experiences and identity into the role. When Carmelo read the script for Angel he commented to me "He seems like you, he’s very similar to you." When I watched the finished film and saw Carmelo portraying Angel and building the character, I told him "Angel is like you, he’s definitely like you." It’s in essence a coming together of two forces into this one character, and you can see both of them in the character. It’s a symbiotic relationship, everything influences everything else, and it’s easier to work with the same actors over and over again because you get to know them better, you learn how they work, you get to know them personally. The interaction and the maturation of my ideas are easier to accomplish with people I know already.

The landscape is of course a central part of the story and there’s a mutual relationship between the landscape and the characters. To me, Tierra is about a man that’s alone on this Earth, a fragile man who feels very small on this world and in this life, and the redness of the landscape increases this sense of loneliness and isolation and how small we are. The landscape can also be subjective and contradictory. I like my films to play out on natural landscapes, on open landscapes, because I think it’s easier for characters to find their essence on these open landscapes, to let their instincts come out as they work through their problems and find answers to their primal questions.