El Deseo

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It’s finished. We’ve seen it, the actors Javier Cámara, Raul Arévalo, Guillermo Toledo, Hugo Silva, Miguel Ángel Silvestre, Carlos Areces, Blanca Suárez, Lola Dueñas and myself. Before the screening started they confessed to me that they were very nervous, as keen to see the film as they were apprehensive. I know that reaction from my previous films, first screenings can be traumatic and generally disconcerting for actors. They have all shared with me the elaboration of each line of dialogue, of each shot, of each decision regarding the look of the characters, of how they changed in the rehearsals and became defined in the shooting; they have endowed them with life but from a place that doesn’t always have to do with awareness of what they were doing, as least not completely. I see them enter and leave, voluntarily, the alienation involved in playing a character and I thank them endlessly for their dedication, theirs and that of all the actors with whom I’ve worked, with one or two exceptions, because theirs is a blind dedication. And they’re fragile. The look in their eyes before the screening started was that of someone who has wakened from a long sleep and is going to watch a screening of that without being totally whether that’s a good or a bad thing. Because there are strange laws in the game which mean that that sleep doesn’t belong entirely to them, that there is a man/woman who, during a long period, has been busy manipulating it (narrating is manipulating, in the best of its meanings), editing it, suppressing parts, coloring it, adding music, and who, finally, yesterday, was going to show it to them. I understand the nerves and the fear. Actors don’t know what film they’ve made, and yet the story wouldn’t exist without their faces, their voices, their eyes, their beauty or distress, their fits of rage and pleasure, their wrinkles, their hands, their peculiarities, their way of walking and moving, their tears, their nakedness.

They’ve seen it, they’re the first to see it, as it should be. I was afraid too, that they wouldn’t like it or it might disconcert them. That would have been perfectly legitimate, but that’s not how it was. They enjoyed it, very loudly. I can say that this is the first success achieved by “I’m So Excited!”. It’s true, they’re actors, and very good ones. They could have been pretending at the end, but I get the impression that it wasn’t so. I hope they all find the success they deserve.

Pedro Almodóvar
18 January 2013