| Penelope Cruz "Returns" to Screen Glory with "Volver" - Page 2 |
| Written by Danny Peary | ||||
| Monday, 13 November 2006 14:26 | ||||
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Cruz at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards
Almodovar and the cast of "Volver"
Cruz gets down to the music in "Volver"
Yohana Cobo (left) plays Raimunda's daughter Paula
Another scene from "Volver"
Her gown was a hit at the Golden Globes
PC: In truth I couldn’t pay attention to where the camera was pointing because I had so much to worry about in every scene, as significant as how my character survives life. I had to do the most difficult things I've had to do in my entire career so I concentrated on my work and had total trust in Pedro. He didn’t do anything without a good reason--a lot of thought went into everything. For instance, we found the look of the character only after months of rehearsing. We started trying on straight skirts and cardigans and Pedro told me that I was too slim. He wanted my character to have big hips so he instructed me to eat everything I wanted and not lose weight. I was so happy to eat all this Spanish paella and I asked my mother to prepare all these fattening dishes. I also ate whatever I cooked. (It was delicious, which is why I haven’t cooked since.) My character gave birth when she was fourteen so there is a good reason for her to look like that. Q: Pedro says that “Volver was influenced by such different sources as “Arsenic and Old Lace” and “Mildred Pierce”—and Alfred Hitchcock—so once you began shooting was it difficult to navigate your character through all the genre and tone changes? PC: After three months of rehearsing, I had all the information I needed about Raimunda; I felt that I had made the connection to her and understood what I had to understand to play her. So I had to forget about work and technique and all of the intellectual process of finding the character and just play her. There were days when we were touching three different genres in one day. For instance, I was doing comedy, then drama, in the morning, and then melodrama, and comedy again, in the afternoon. To do this, I had to just take care of one action at a time. That made sense because that's the way Raimunda lives her life. If not, she would be dead. She has no other choice. She has so many problems, so many things to take care of, that the only way to survive is by taking one action at a time. And that was only way for me to do this character. Because on the days that I didn't do that, I felt so overwhelmed. I would have been completely blocked and paralyzed if I didn’t do one thing at a time. It didn't matter what I would be doing after lunch, maybe it would be comedy again, but all that mattered was what I had to do at that moment. It helped me a lot realizing that's how Raimunda lived her life. Q: You said that Raimunda is the most emotionally demanding part you ever played. How did you see her? PC: I feel she's not crazy, but she's emotionally up and down. What a roller coaster she is emotionally! I was able to find order in her chaotic behavior and I could identify with her in those terms. Something very traumatic happened to her in regard to her father when she was a teenager, so you have to imagine what this girl looked like and felt like when she was a teenager, living in that house with that father and that mother. And how did that make her father feel, and how that make her mother feel? Something bad happened, but she hasn't become a victim and she hasn't exterminated her sexuality, which can happen to a woman who has gone through what she did. But she didn’t and she’s not a victim. Q: Your character doesn’t allow herself to be a victim and is triumphant, but is she damaged somewhat? Including sexually, where she can take sex or--if you consider the night her husband must take care of himself because she’s too tired and uninterested--leave it? PC: That’s the only sexual encounter that she has in the movie, apart from hearing about her past. The behavior of her husband is disgusting, particularly when she's been working twenty hours and is having all these troubles with her family. What he does beside her in the bed is one the funniest scenes ever written, I think. It was difficult for me not to laugh because I could hear the actor. I couldn't see him, but I could hear him. I thought, “This is so great.” But I felt so sad for Raimunda in that moment. She is damaged, she is damaged, and she has reasons to be. There are so many things that she doesn't want to look at and when she looks at them she breaks down. When her mother comes back to life, she gets the opportunity to think things through and resolve issues. I think what happened with her mother hurt her even more than what happened with her father. Her mother was the person she believed in and then she lost that trust. When she thinks that her mother is gone forever and they will never get the chance to resolve those issues, she walks around with the heavy weight. But when her mother comes back to life, all those things that happened with her father, her mother, and her own daughter and husband can be resolved. By confronting those things, she finds a peace that she has not had since what happened to her as a teenager. She is damaged because of those things, but she manages to keep going. That's what I love so much about her. Q: When Raimunda’s daughter tells her she killed her husband, the girl’s stepfather, after he made sexual advances toward her, Raimunda immediately accepts her story and, in a scene that recalls Anthony Perkins disposing of Janet Leigh’s body in “Psycho,” disposes of the body with extreme practicality. PC: All of her past comes back because of what happened between her husband and her daughter. Then when she's cleaning the blood, somebody is at the door; and the neighbor comes by with problems; and then there’s a phone call; and there are more problems. It’s like that for days. I was scared because I didn’t know how you go from that scene to another scene to another scene and, as I said before, the tone really changes so much. Some of those scenes had to be funny without us trying to be funny—as an actress, you are aware of what is wanted, but you have to forget it. The genius of Pedro is that he can make you accept all of those transitions and that all these things could happen to one human being at the same time in her life. Raimunda finds a way to handle it all because she has no other choice. She has to be practical. She has to find a way to hide the body. She has to protect her daughter. She has to solve her problems. There is no other way to do it. Q: Raimunda has such a chaotic, busy life, yet every morning she takes time to make herself up to look beautiful. PC: She has four jobs a day, but she takes her fifteen minutes in the morning to put herself together to create an image of how she wants to see herself. I know a lot of women like that in the outskirts of Madrid. I've hung out with a lot of women like that because I come from a lower middle-class family. I didn't grow up with a lot of money. My parents had to work very hard to raise us. The area where Raimunda lives is similar to where I grew up. Actually, where my grandmother was living is where Raimunda lives in the movie, so I've been very much in contact with that kind of reality and know those Spanish women. There is meaning behind Raimunda getting her 15 minutes in the morning and putting herself together in the way she wants to be perceived, even if it is to go to the airport and clean the floor of the bathroom there. I know a lot of women like that and I love them and I respect them because they respect themselves. So when people ask, “How come Raimunda is a housewife and a cleaning lady, yet has on eyeliner?,” I get annoyed. It’s such a crazy thing to ask! I feel it's like an insult to that kind of woman and to that kind of job. Q: There is Academy Award buzz for “Volver.” I’m sure you remember when you were on stage when Pedro won one of his previous Oscars. It’s hard to forget. If his name wasn't there in the envelope, would you have called it out anyway? PC: No. No. You have to stick to the rules. But I was very happy that it was his name. I screamed. I couldn't control myself because I was so happy for him. When he was talking, I just wanted him to say everything that he wanted to say but then they started with the music and he kept saying funny things. He's always funny giving those speeches. He's funny all the time. Q: You’ve won awards internationally, but are you excited that your name has come up in regard to a possible Oscar nomination for Best Actress? PC: I never know how to answer that. I don't want to pretend to be cool and say, “Oh, I don't care about that,” because that's not true. Of course, it would make me very happy if the film wins Oscars. I want Pedro to get everything he deserves. And in regard to me, it’s exciting but at the same time we all know it's better not to think about it too much. You shouldn't expect anything because it's not something that's solid. I tell you that it's difficult not to think about it when people mention it to me twenty times a day. So twenty times a day, I think about it. Q: Pedro said that you haven’t had the critical success you deserved in American films because of the frivolous way the media perceived you when you were offscreen with Tom Cruise and in front of its cameras. PC: For me to respond, I'd have to hear his words. Because the way Pedro speaks, there is always what he's trying to tell you as well as something else—and as a result, he’s not always quoted correctly. He knows that we are great friends and that I am strongly loyal to the people that have been good to me and he's one of them. So that's all my answer to that. I've done 30 movies in Europe and only about five here in America because my career here is younger. I think I’m going through a normal process. I don't see anything strange in that. Hopefully I can find material here that compares to what I do in Europe, while continuing to make films there. I can say that the things that worked and the things that didn't all have meant something to me. Everyone I worked with taught me something important, and I'm very grateful for every opportunity that people have given me because they have gotten me to this movie today. Q: Well, even if you don’t find anything worthwhile in America, Pedro says he is eager to work with you again. PC: Has he told you something? He gives me little hints, saying he’s thinking of making a movie and there this character and that character, but he never says anything more. So I only find out he is thinking seriously about casting me when I do interviews. If he really wants me to be in another of his movies, that's great news! |
