Luis Martínez Madrid
Madrid
Updated Friday, March 15, 2024-9:35 p.m.
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Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1967)
has spent his entire life accustomed to being first.
It was when he got an Oscar nomination for his short '
Handcuffed
' in 1996. I still am when in 2007 he took charge of the zombie sequel devised by Danny Boyle.
And he didn't stop being that when he packed his bags and moved to Los Angeles to work on TV.
Now he comes back and does it as the last one to premiere on Netflix.
He does it with '
Damsel
', a fantasy of dragons, dungeons and princesses in the most eternal of styles.
That the protagonist is the star of '
Stranger Things
', Millie Bobby Brown, puts him back in the lead.
And so.
"Being the first Oscar-nominated filmmaker paved the way...he made me feel like the sniper who shoots and gets it right the first time," he says.
And he loads again.
Does '
Damsel
' mean your return? It means returning to what I consider my natural place.
I tried television, I liked it.
It was a positive experience and I learned a lot, but I think I'm more into building stories around a personal vision.
When you work on TV, someone else is in control and you are just a collaborator who, in the end, is not in the detail.
Has he stopped being what we call a Spanish film director? I am a traveler.
I like to travel.
And this film is the result of a very long trip since 2013 when I went to live in the United States.
Now I live in Lisbon.
Let's say I've returned to Europe.
What I have always looked for are different experiences.
On the other hand, I am fortunate that everything I have done, from the most local, has traveled very well.
Since my first short, '
Esposados
'.
I have the impression that everything I can think of could interest anyone.
But I don't look for it, it comes naturally to me.
I have not set out to be an American, European or Spanish film director.
And I think that has to do with the fact of being born on an island, with being from the Canary Islands. That requires an explanation. The Canary Islands are a place without identity.
Geographically it is in Africa, culturally it is connected to Latin America, and politically and socially it belongs to Europe.
It is a pottage of cultures with all the identities of the world.
And that is built into my nature.
My family is essentially emigrants.
Globality has been in me since before it existed as a concept.
What did you learn from TV? Humility.
You learn to work as a team.
You learn that it's not about making your movie but about making the best movie possible.
And that means listening.
Directing for me is that: listening.
And that is practiced from minute one on television. Doesn't it irritate you that your return to the cinema ends precisely on TV? I am optimistic and nostalgic at the same time.
Knowing that a five-year project will be in 250 million homes simultaneously is an injection of optimism.
It's a total turn-on.
And that offsets the bitterness of seeing how the living room experience is increasingly relegated to a niche space.
Now people go to the movies to see mass entertainment products and not to reflect on our time.
And I experience that as a loss.
I feel sorry.
I grew up in the 70s, the era of the most combative cinema.
We seem to lose the immersive ritual of sharing a film about important topics with people.
I would have loved '
Damsel
' to have had a theatrical release, of course.
But... You can fight to a certain extent.
If you like the film, maybe in the next one I can negotiate for it to be seen in theaters as well. It's been 13 years since '
Intruders
', his latest film...The American industry is very mobile.
In some way, everything I have done since then has come together in this project.
The fantastic, the supernatural, the esoteric... have always been present in my cinema, but I had never embraced the epic of fantasy.
That's what I was looking for in '
Damsel
'. What is that fantasy epic? It has to do with the medieval fantasy stories that I read as a child and they left me captivated.
I wanted to pay tribute to that whole world.
What '
Damsel
' does is take a classic structure and turn it into something very modern and contemporary.
The relationship that the film establishes with '
The Princess Bride'
via Robin Wright, I imagine is part of the suggestions sought...I confess that it was something coincidental.
Turning Princess Buttercup into an evil queen was not intended, although, to be honest, it fits perfectly.
Robin's ambivalence that can be both very warm and very terrifying is great. How do you modernize fantasy?
Is it necessary to review popular stories? I would replace the obligation of "I have it" with simply "I like it."
That's what I wanted, to revisit a classic story and turn it into the setting for a heroine who is a young woman.
It is simply a desire that coincides with the social values and cultures that are present right now.
I wanted a princess, yes, but from another place than usual, from a place of survival.
That is what modernizes it because it brings it closer to an everyday place, we have all gone through a moment of survival in our lives. Would you define her film as a feminist film? Yes, you could say yes.
In the end, a process of empowerment of a woman is recounted.
That is the history.
But the film doesn't stop there.
Feminine and feminist values are there for everyone.
Growing up, maturing, leaving the family behind... All that happens in '
Damsel
'is a universal scenario.
My heroine covers all genders and aims to be a model for them as well as for them.
It is a women's story for everyone.
I don't feel bothered if it is said that it is a feminist story, because I consider myself a feminist.
A recent controversy had to do with the warnings that Disney placed in some of its classics about content, for example, racist...I understand and respect that many people, when seeing cultural products from another era, may feel offended.
The social and ideological values that emanate from many of these books or films are offensive because they are the result of another era and there were other codes.
And I think the policy of warning the viewer is the solution.
What doesn't seem right to me is manipulation, rewriting or censorship... Are you referring to what happened, for example, with Roald Dahl? Yes, that seems like a mistake to me.
That is altering memory.
Memory must be understood, understood and placed in the right place.
And that is done with education.
The correct thing is to warn and make it clear that there are certain products from another era that may be offensive today.
We are aware, we are adults, and we decide whether or not we want to consume whatever it is.
That is mature and adult.
Manipulating the past is censorship and culture has to be a representation of freedom.
By the way, how do you remember that time after the success of 'Handcuffed' when you had conversations and even signed a contract with Harvey Weinstein? I lived through a very tortuous process.
It was a torture.
The way they got me to sign the contract was terrible.
Terrifying.
I had a very bad time.
I was fortunate that the producer Fernando Bovaira helped me cancel everything and I was able to escape from that hell that was a cage.
He was a kid.
Sign the contract scared.
That was a complete abuse of power situation.
When what happened subsequently happened and everything came to light it wasn't a big surprise.
Fortunately, they are no longer there.