One of the founding mothers of modern Catalan cinema, throughout her now 20-year career, Mar Coll has constantly questioned established thought, whether it be the hypocrisy of the Catalan upper middle class and its emotional paralysis (“Three Days with the Family”), the comic paternalism of paternal narcissism (“Matar al Padre”), or the superiority of Scandinavian social models (“Not Sweden”).
In Salve Maria, which premiered in the main international competition in Locarno, Cole questions a taboo, even for many in 2024: whether all women are qualified for motherhood. Salve Maria, which she directed in a largely naturalistic style from her previous work, marks a breakthrough in her career, presenting the film as a psychological thriller that transcends all genres.
Maria, an aspiring novelist and new mother, is increasingly haunted by the threat of a monster: herself. She comes across a newspaper article that makes her obsessed with a French woman in Barcelona who drowned her 10-month-old twins in a bathtub. “From that moment on, the specter of infanticide looms over Maria’s life as a frightening possibility,” the novel’s synopsis reads.
The decision to make a psychological thriller is evident throughout the film: in its old-fashioned air, its 35mm format, the vibrant orchestral score, composed by Zeltia Montes, winner of the Best Original Score from the Spanish Goya Academy for The Good President starring Javier Bardem; and the atmosphere of delirium that builds when Maria stops hiding her neurosis and sets off to the Pyrenees to search for Alice; scenes of pure fantasy.
Salve Maria was sold by Be For Film, produced by Maria Zamora at Elástica Films, Spain's most active arthouse film production company, and Escándalo Films, founded by Sergi Casamitjana to produce work by former students of Barcelona's Escac film school, of which Gabiona and Coll herself are perhaps the most famous graduates.
Elástica Films also handles local distribution in Spain.
Marco Cole
Courtesy of Locarno Film Festival
diverse We caught up with Cole on the eve of this year's Locarno Film Festival.
In your film Hail Mary, some things remain the same. Since your first feature, Three Days with the Family in 2009, you have questioned the established middle-class mindset and its principles. Here, you raise the stakes, suggesting that not all mothers are cut out for motherhood.
Marco Cole: Definitely. My co-screenwriter Valentina Viso and I always try to work from a place that is thought-provoking, somewhat confusing, and questions assumptions. There is always an element of critical thinking in our films.
However, Hail Mary is a departure in other respects, as your main decision, after directing a comedy-drama in a naturalistic style, was to create a psychological thriller…
Yes, exactly. One of the changes is that it is adapted from Katixa Aguirre's book “Mothers Don't Do That,” which is a different kind of thing, as you say, from the more naturalistic style of cinema that we were making. But we wanted to reframe it as a thriller. We didn't want it to be too intellectual. It was more atmospheric. Looking back, I think it was good to tell the story the way we did: this sense of pain, guilt, brutality: a film more about experience and physical sensation.
Savagery is also a social concept. One of the key scenes is Maria's visit to a Gothic church in the village of Taul in the Pyrenees…
The film is about the taboo and guilt associated with feeling that what is happening to you negates your existence not only as a mother but as a person. It is assumed that a mother, simply by the fact of giving birth, will be able to love and raise a child.
In the Book of Beasts, the animals representing sins were related to existing animals. However, since the illustrators had not seen these animals, they depicted them as monsters. Since unnatural motherhood is not fully known, they are also thought to be monsters. Infanticide is committed by someone who is the “other,” the monster, who is not like us. As writers and creators, we try to understand, empathize, and get closer to the person. It is significant that the illustrators, since they did not know these animals, depicted them as monsters.
A woman who is not fit for motherhood remains one of the great taboos of the 21st century.
But it’s not that unusual. I think motherhood always brings up a lot of conflicting emotions. It’s probably one of the most intense situations we’re dealing with, but it’s there more than you might think. But it’s not on our moral compass. So it becomes very difficult to talk about. It’s very difficult to understand that this is happening to you, because it makes you a failure, a monster, a bad person. And then it becomes very difficult to communicate—because of the guilt, the shame, the stigma, the rejection, and it’s very difficult for other people to figure out what’s going on. People ask why Maria’s husband doesn’t realize what’s going on, but he doesn’t because he simply can’t imagine that this kind of thing could happen to Maria.
Another departure is the soundtrack….
Yes, the entire soundtrack of the film was composed by Zeltija Montes. We went to record the film in Budapest. This film was a learning curve for me because it allowed me to play with language. When you make a film for actors, you look for emotions through other channels. The producer Maria Zamora encouraged me: “Yes, yes, yes: there will be music all the time in this film.”
The use of genre in socially themed films is a growing trend among young directors.
It is a film that belongs to a generation. We wanted to make a film that was more cinematic, perhaps to stand out from television, and a film that had a love of language and the resources that narrative creates, 35mm, expressive shots and a soundtrack used as in classic films. And yet the film mixes tones to maintain its rhythm and dramatic tension.
As in the first scenes of Maria attending motherhood classes, which give an almost documentary feel…
In general, we used real mothers and a large number of children, seeking to give a sense of realism. I would say that we are making a psychological thriller, but in the European style, with elements of contemplation: a disturbing film with characters with a certain moral ambiguity, where the element of excitement is built up.
