Antonio de la Torre (Málaga, 1968) knows what it's like to be cold. At the end of the 80s, every Sunday night he would get on one of the trucks of the company where his father was a transporter to travel from Malaga to the Complutense University, where he was studying Journalism. “I was always very self-conscious. I remember being embarrassed that they thought I was a jerk because of my thick Andalusian accent. And he also had a certain poor complex; “He was traveling in the cabin of the truck wrapped in a blanket because the heating was not working.” Antonio graduated while trying to make his way in cinema and today he is an Illustrious Alumnus of the Complutense and the Spanish actor with the most nominations in the history of the Goya.
Antonio has once again known what it is like to be cold. This time, in the Pyrenees and with the remains of a republican battalion in the film We treat women too well, a story of maquis who resist Franco's regime with everything lost and whose title is only understood at the end. In the film, drama, history and black comedy are mixed and sustained thanks to the commendable work of Antonio along with Carmen Machi, Isak Férriz, Óscar Ladoire, Julián Villagrán, Luis Tosar and Gonzalo de Castro, among others.
You play a militiaman who is called Twelve because he has lost 11 brothers in the Civil War. What did you do to empathize with the character?
In general, I always look for an element to connect with: I have known loss, my parents, and on an ideological level, I am not revealing anything to you if I tell you that I am left-wing and that if I had been born at that time I would have supported the republic.
What if you had been a Francoist colonel?
Everyone has their reasons and you have to understand them. In this case I found it quite familiar because of that pain, that loneliness, that sullenness... It is one of the actor's challenges, getting into the head of a man in the war eighty years ago.
The film includes elements of magical realism that fit very well with the story, Clara Bilbao's debut film.
I was a judge at a short film festival and Clara was competing with one called Forbidden to Throw Corpses in the Garbage, with Juan Luis Cano as the protagonist. He amazed me with his universe, with his irreverence, so much so that I told him in a creepy way, 'If you ever make a movie, let me know.' And he did it. When I read the script I thought 'this movie is by Tarantino and it works like a motherfucker around the world'. For my part, it seemed essential that the interpretation was very realistic for balance. And we had a military advisor, Joaquín Chamorro, to show us, among other things, how to move with a weapon on our shoulder.
Have you ever felt the desperation, the resignation that Twelve experiences in the film?
At one point in my life I lost a lot of hope. A friend told me 'you don't want to kill yourself, you want to die'. She was very young and caused me anxiety for the future. I can understand hopelessness and your question is pertinent: you cannot tell what you do not know. This does not mean that to play a murderer I have to kill, but it does mean trying to understand that impulse of violence that we have all had, looking into your darkest side. I think that as an actor you are almost like you are as a person: an actor has to be a lived person, with the ability to absorb life, to understand it. You have to be a vitally very restless, very curious person.
Perhaps because you were working class you decided to get involved: in the last general elections you were last on Sumar's list in Malaga.
I was very worried because I imagined Santiago Abascal as vice president of the Government. I spoke with Teresa Rodríguez because I have to deal with her more and she has sometimes asked me to collaborate in campaigns – in fact, I have sent her a video about something about Palestine – and I told her, please, you have to come together. Well, they did one thing that seemed good to me within the complexity of the puzzle that is the unity of the left, and that was to show up only for Cádiz. The fact is that the people of Malaga offered it to me and I agreed to close the list as a symbolic gesture. Oh, and I have a nice anecdote with Yolanda Díaz: when she thanked me, I responded 'so that they call you a Caesarist, that they sneak in a candidate and you don't even notice' (laughs). Election night was amazing because I had come from filming in Tortosa and I got on the plane convinced that when I landed I would be in a different country. I am grateful that Catalonia and Euskadi came to the rescue. So that later the supporters club says that the Catalans... First of all, my opinion regarding the Catalan identity: I know it seems like a good thing talking to you in Barcelona, but I tell you from the bottom of my heart: I love Catalonia. Maybe more specifically Barcelona, because it is what I know best, but I think this city is the most beautiful in the world
Do you like Pedro Sánchez?
He doesn't seem like a left-wing man to me; In that sense, for me the best president of Spain to date has been Zapatero. But I recognize his ability. I think Sánchez has more political astuteness than ideological conviction. Everything that was done on the left in the previous legislature was for Unidas Podemos. And now it will surely be thanks to Sumar. But anyway, the division of the left is the squaring of the circle.
In Spain, bullfighting, automobiles, agriculture, hospitality... Everything is subsidized. What do you feel when the right points you that way?
One of the things that fascinates me most about these times is that on the mobile we have all the universal knowledge, and I feel it almost more like the journalist I was, it is the immediate possibility of contrasting the information. A study by the Spain Film Commission shows that for every euro invested in cinema, two are generated: in direct and indirect jobs, advertising impact, etc. Cinema generates more wealth than spending but there are also 700,000 people who work in the culture of this country and are a strategic sector as a society. Anyway, it's sad but there came a time when I gave up dismantling that hoax.
Do your children with a famous father hesitate at school?
No. Dani has once said it but bah. Ah, Martina, she plays a small role in the movie.
