Interview: Lorenzo Vigas on his Prize Winning Drama "From Afar"
Thursday, December 8, 2016 at 4:01PM This year's Oscar race for foreign film has the usual number of World War II dramas, biopics, and historical epics but as far as we can tell it's only got one Latin American LGBT drama about a damaged old man's thorny relationship with a poor street hustler he picks up who keeps coming back thereafter for more cash and the more mysterious pull of companionship. That film, Desde Alla / From Afar, now available to screen on Netflix, began its breakthrough journey winning the Golden Lion at Venice in 2015 for first time narrative director Lorenzo Vigas. I talked to him about working with an Oscar winning screenwriter, that Venice honor, and his terrific young find, Luis Silva, who holds his own opposite one of the Latin America's finest actors, Alredo Castro.
The interview is after the jump...
NATHANIEL: How did this movie go from story to feature -- I understand Guillermo Arriago, who we know stateside as one of Alejandro Inarritu's main collaborators, helped this project along?
LORENZO VIGAS: We share the story credit. He used to go to Venezuela to do workshops in University. He's a teacher and at that moment I was doing a documentary series for TV. We became friends and I told him the idea and he loved it. He said 'Come to Mexico and I'll help you develop it.' So we built something like an argument for the film. And then I sat for three years and wrote it. The obsessions and ideas belong to me.
Why did it take you so long?
Well you know. I was making a feature about my father that took five years. That documentary was very important to me. My father was a very important painter in Venezuela. When I completed the documentary I felt I was ready to jump into fiction.
One thing I think is memorable about the movie is that it's both highly specific and vague.
That's very interesting.
When you meet Alfredo Castro, his character Armando has an extremely peculiar job and you watch him at work. And then you get that first sex scene in which he is absolutely particular about what he wants. And yet so much of the movie is ambigious. Were you consciously working on that tension between a lot of information and none?
I think ambiguity is important. It's closer to real life and films should be. In the 60s and 70s movies were closer to life. When you go to a movie and they tell you how to feel, the emotions are very flat. It's important to leave space for the audiences to bring their own experience to the film. In this way the film has two different directions of communications. You're giving information and at the same the time the audience is putting information into the film. I think this is richer -- it makes you active as an audience.
I agree. But for you as a writer was all the eliptical stuff in the script?
It was already a very ambiguous screenplay but during the making of the film I reinforced that idea. Not only leaving some dialogue out but also formally there are a lot of things that happen out of frame. When we edited it I decided it should be even more eliptical.
The relationship betwen the two main characters. It's so transactional. There have been many movies over the years about hustlers. Were you at all concerned that that can be a negative portait of the gay community.
It's not about good or bad. Even Armando-- he can be seen as a dark characater but he was most probably abused as a kid. Emotionally he's damaged. It's just the consequences of a life. The film does not accept any kind of moralization. If you take it out of the context of a homosexual relationship -- it's not about that. It's about being able to love someone or not. That's important.
The ending I thought was so good -- even though it's brutal because it follows actual intimacy and clearly Armando is not comfortable with that.
Exactly. You know someone who has a perfectly controlled life. He doesn't like intimacy. Finally there's a boy living with him. How can he deal with love -- he doesn't know this?
It's an emotionally complicated movie but did you have politics in mind also when you made it? The class disparity between the characters is quite foregrounded.
It turned out to be a strong political statement but in the beginning that's not what I was looking for. I was just writing about an impossible relationships between two people from different worlds. We are living in a moment of deep crisis and a hatred between classes in Venezuela. It turned out to be political.
That organically showed up?
Exactly.
Your young actor Luis Silva is so watchable, and his screen presence is so different than Castro's which really added to the film. But one of the reasons Silva is so good is that it feels like he's not acting. I understand he didn't have much experience so how much coaching did you have to do?
If you take a street kid and put a camera in front of him and ask him to do the things in the film it would never work. The film works because Silva is a natural. I was very lucky to find an amazing actor. There are things that were familiar for him -- he comes from a tough neighborhood - but on the other hand he had never lived a story like that so he was really put into a lot of emotional places.
NATHANIEL: Since your first narrative feature was chosen to represent Venezuela at the Oscars and you WON the Golden Lion. Are you feeling any jitters like 'Where do I go from there?' That's quite a way to start!
Tarkovsky won the Golden Lion on his first feature so I figured out that I'd be just like Tarkovsky [Laughing] I'm just kidding! It was amazing. I feel very fortunate about everything that's happened with the film. We worked very hard on the film. I think it deserved the prize and the jury considered it the best.
Would you attend the Oscars if you're ever nominated?
Of course. Why wouldn't I!?! I think it's an amazing way to have your film seen by many people. When you make a film you wish the film to be seen. It's normal. Winning the Golden Lion was amazing and an opportunity to show the movie around the world. Having an Oscar nomination would be even bigger.
What's up next for you?
I'm working on my next film. It's called The Box. It's the end of my trilogy about missing fathers in Latin America. The first part of the trilogy is a short film, From Afar is the second, and The Box will be the last.
Foreign Film Oscar Charts
Predictions
Submissions
Other Foreign Film Oscar Interviews
Singapore - Boo Junfeng on the prison drama The Apprentice
Cuba - Pavel Giroud on the Havana HIV drama The Companion
South Korea - Kim Jee-woon on The Age of Shadows
Austria - Maria Schrader on Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe
Italy - Gianfranco Rosi on the prize-winning Fire at Sea
Foreign Film Contender Reviews
Death in Sarajevo - Bosnia & Herzegovina | Neruda - Chile | Mother - Estonia | Elle - France | Toni Erdmann - Germany | The Salesman - Iran | Chevalier - Greece | Sand Storm - Israel | Fire at Sea - Italy | Desierto - Mexico | A Flickering Truth - New Zealand | Apprentice - Singapore | Age of Shadows- South Korea | Julieta - Spain | My Life as a Courgette - Switzerland | Under the Shadow - UK | From Afar - Venezuela
Reader Comments (5)
I love how the interview with the brazillian director is omited. I really do. I am not being ironic. I took this as a protest in favor of aquarius.
Very good interview. I saw the movie in June and I remember it as if it were yesterday. Usually that's a good sign. The ending, the quinceañera, the sex... we have an author here.
I didn't like that film and, here's the frustrating part, I can't remember why.
This was one of my favorite surprises of the year in that I didn't expect to like it this much, and I very much did. It's the film I keep thinking about and re-examining in my head as I get some distance from, and I think the specificity/ambiguity angle (we know very clear things about Armando, even if there are other things we're completely in the dark on) is part of what drives that discussion.
Has anybody seen EASTERN BOYS? They are remarkably similar.