The old adage goes: “Write about what you know.” And in “Rita,” her first feature as a writer, director and producer, Spanish Paz Vega takes that to heart. Years before she broke out in 2001’s “Sex and Lucía” and starred opposite Adam Sandler in 2004’s “Spanglish,” Vega grew up in Triana, a district of Seville in Andalusia, Spain.
Set in 1984 in a small part of Vega's hometown, the film stars Spanish actress Paz, one of the most famous Spanish faces in world cinema, but her role is very modest. Although she plays Rita's mother, Mari, and appears in several scenes, her face is not shown until the 14th minute of the film. The film focuses on Rita, who is 7 years old and was only a year younger than Vega in real life in 1984, and her little brother Lulu, who is 5 years old.
This is mostly it, or the first part of “Rita”, a nostalgic revival of Paz's childhood whose scent was one of the reasons behind Vega's Locarno premiere in Piazza Grande, where the Locarno Festival screenings are reserved for films of a wider audience.
Rita records everything that happened in her childhood in the 1980s. An initial two-minute video clip snakes from a primitive metal fan, over notebooks, boxes of crayons, a vintage toy truck, a man on a carpet, a small basket of marbles, and a wristwatch, to Rita, who is just waking up in her loft bed. The clip lasts two minutes.
But Rita's retro collection includes not just objects, but sounds and sensations: in the same pan Rita is captured climbing the ladder from her bed, her bare feet on the metal bars: anyone who has done that will remember the unique but fleeting inconvenience, the loud ringing of the 1980s landline, or the dry burns caused by handling hot toast straight from the toaster.
But soon the girl in Rita hears other sounds: the muffled screams of her father, José Manuel, as he attacks her mother, Mary, and what could be the sound of dull punches.
The first part of “Rita” records childhood happiness, while the second part records more and more suffering.
This film focuses on the impact of domestic violence on children as seen by children, and is also written by an author.
“This is a powerful work by writer and director. As director Giona A. Nazzaro commented on Locarno: diverse“While Paz Vega is a superstar, in ‘Rita’ she emerges as a true director, becoming invisible in service of the story,” says Irene Airoldi of Filmax, the film’s sales agent and local producer.
Rita was produced by Marta Velasco and Gonzalo Pindala at Aralán Films, one of the leading production companies in Andalusia, behind Carlos Vermut's Quien te cantará and Patricia Ferreira's The Wild Ones, in collaboration with Ola Films and the post-production facility Arte Sonora Estudios in Madrid.
Paz Vega
Copyright: Pia Hohenleiter
diverse I spoke with Vega in the run-up to Locarno:
You play Rita's mother, Mary, but from the title of the film to the first shot, the focus is on Rita…
This was the first thought that came to my mind when I came up with this movie. There are many movies that deal with this topic. [of domestic violence]But it is new to look at the subject through the eyes of a child: how he knows everything around him and tries to understand the adult world. We tend to underestimate children. They are very intelligent.
A short example of this is when Mother Mary, Rita and Lulu were on the bus, and Rita offered Mary her seat, and stood by the window…
Yes, there is a man standing next to Mary. Rita knows this. It is very interesting to explore how children live through complex family situations, and also how they use their imagination to escape reality, for example. Rita is always drawing, drawing reality as she wants it to be.
Rita also loves to go out and feed the birds in the garden or lie on the grass and look at the clouds. And this is no coincidence…
My idea was that the apartment was stifling, not just because of the heat, but because of the negative energy there. So when Rita goes up to the rooftop terrace of the apartment building, she feels happy and free. Going out is a moment of happiness and hope.
There is also a constant sense of childhood, even in the most mundane acts like getting down the bed ladder…
I had a bunk bed like that! And I folded the tablecloth like Rita does when she cleans up after dinner. People can relate to these things and when they do, they make the movie their own and they enter Rita's life in a way.
As a director, you seem to like shooting within the frame…
For me, photography is essential in cinema. It was important that what was in the frame had meaning, but what was off camera was equally important, where the adults were not there, but we heard what was happening. It creates a sense of pain not seeing what was happening and seeing the reactions of children who did not need to watch their parents fighting. My focus is on how toxic relationships between parents affect children.
The film deals with the character of Lulu, a delicate child. For his father, Jose Manuel, he is a failure, he is not strong enough; the audience will expect that he might have beaten him.
Yes, it's very interesting. The relationship between the father, José Manuel, and Lulu is one of poorly understood masculinity. It's toxic masculinity. The father wants the boy to be a manly man because his father must have forced him to be. For José Manuel, Lulu is not up to par. It's a chain of interactions that goes from one generation to the next, and people who have a father like that suffer a lot.
The question many people may ask you is: After working with so many famous directors, did any of them influence you significantly when you started making your first film as a director?
I tried not to be like anyone because the story is very personal. I had images in my mind from the beginning. I like the way some directors work with actors, like Sean Baker. I loved Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest. But the film has nothing to do with Rita. Maybe there are scenes of everyday life on the streets that remind me of Italian neorealism, but Rita has its own essence, and that's good.
You have worked in many countries, but you chose to make your first film as a director in Spain, in your homeland of Andalusia.
I'm from Seville, and I lived my childhood in the 80s, the childhood I know. It gave me the strength of truth. Apart from domestic violence, I went through everything that happened to Rita. Rita's neighborhood, her mother's work as a seamstress, that's my story too. It's me.
And the whole crew is Andalusian?
Everyone, except Roberto Alamo, who plays José Manuel, who is from Madrid. It was good that he came from outside Seville, so he could feel isolated, in a place that was not his home, which meant he was always angry, in a hot city, raising his family, working all day. There were many fathers who felt they were doing the right thing but were wrong. For me, José Manuel is another victim of the masculinity model.
