Berlinale 2022: “In Mexico, violence is a tragedy that lives with us”

Natalia Lopez Gallardo, director of "Robe of Gems" and in the running for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale 2022. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

5 mins

Robe of Gems

 is one of the favorites for the Golden Bear of this 72nd edition of the Berlinale.

And if you feel taken by the throat, even physically affected by the cinema of Natalia Lopez Gallardo, it's no coincidence: “ 

 ”, affirms the Mexican director.

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In the running for the Golden Bear,

 could be translated as: “A robe of jewels”.

A poetic and idyllic title which nevertheless hides a rare violence and cruelty.

Natalia Lopez Gallardo, 42, is already appearing in her first feature film as a master of suspense.

And for good reason: in the past she has worked with the greatest Mexican filmmakers, such as on

, by Amat Escalante, or

by Carlos Reygadas.

In her own film, Natalia Lopez Gallardo tells the story of three women marked by a violence that is as intangible and mysterious as it is omnipresent, crossing all layers of Mexican society.

RFI

Natalia Lopez Gallardo

I think that each country has its reality and its society, and it has its own problems, its own darkness and its own light.

In German films, we may talk a lot about loneliness… In Mexico, we express this violence because it is a tragedy that has lived with us for so many years.

This is why all people who create in Mexico feel affected by violence to some degree.

The ways of describing or approaching the problem are very different, but the problem is so deep and the affect is very big, although I think we have to talk about it.

It's not because there is a “tradition” of violence in Mexico, no, it's because something is happening deep in society, to the point that we have it in us.

► 

In

, the viewer feels like they know everything about this family, even if you give very little concrete information about its members.

Everything goes through the atmospheres and encounters around this family.

The main protagonist of the film, is it the family or rather the country

I wanted to make a film about a small universe.

I can only talk about the social context through experiences of violence that I have known in my life.

And I lived in rural Mexico.

So I can speak through that experience.

Then I wanted to build a kind of group, to create a setup where we talk about certain ideas, but not centered on a single character or a single point of view.

I tried to portray an atmosphere.

An atmosphere that permeates a space, a universe.

"Robe of Gems" (Mexico, Argentina, United States), by Natalia López Gallardo, in the running for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale 2022. © Visit Films

When we look at the colors, the places, it's a marvelous journey to which you invite us.

But very quickly, everything is overwhelmed by violence.

There is no hope, no justice, no innocence, no way out.

Like the gardener noting laconically

When a friend watched the opening scene, he said to me, "

."

Of course, it is the portrait of something which is underlying and which pervades everything.

When I started the film, I had a feeling of abandonment and a feeling of fear of the future, of not having a common future in some way.

Then I trusted those ideas and those impulses.

I wanted them to permeate the whole film.

I thought about that throughout the film.

But Mexico is a very complex place.

I didn't want to show things frontally.

I needed to show things aside.

In a way, I wanted to show all the points of this “star”.

And it is a very complex “star”.

► 

You take a lot of time to install us in atmospheres.

You give us a lot of time to get into atmospheres for us viewers to imagine things.

Can we say that your images are not projected to be watched, but to give time and to open spaces for our imagination

Yes.

I consider that cinema must go far beyond the simple fact of telling facts to create a story.

I consider cinema to be an experience.

An experience that is very much linked to the body, to the physical body, because we live the present through the body.

And in the narrative system that we're used to today, because it's ubiquitous, it's a narrative based on what's to come, a kind of anxiety about the future.

And there will be a reward at the end.

But if you seek a reward, you forget the present.

You forget your body.

And I don't think any human experience is really linear and direct: neither memory, nor dreams, or physical experiences.

My goal was to create an atmosphere to bring me closer to the cinema in which I believe.

And the cinema I believe in is the one that creates an experience through cinematographic language.

An experience linked to intuition and that you can feel with your own values ​​and your own perception of life.

Even though he's a well-designed character, he's just a character of sorts.

► 

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