Hotels have always had an appeal for literature and cinema. Vicki Baum wrote Grand Hotel in 1929, an ensemble novel in which the lives of very different people were intertwined as they passed through a Berlin hotel between the wars. The book was made into a film by Edmund Goulding in 1932 in a production of the same title made in the best Hollywood style with John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo as protagonists.
With Grand Hotel, the hotel subgenre was inaugurated, which has been established in film and television with series such as Hotel, based on a novel by Arthur Hailey, which in the 80s delighted after-dinner viewers and served to elevate James Brolin and Connie Sellecca and to give a second career to Anne Baxter, star of classic cinema. The subgenre has also been successful in Spain with productions such as Gran Hotel, starring Amaia Salamanca between 2011 and 2013.
Rodolfo Sancho now gives a new twist to hospitality cinema as the protagonist of Delfines de Plata, a film directed by Javier Elorrieta, which will hit the big screen tomorrow. The film is based on a novel by Félix García Hernán, who owns a hotel and who began to write a few years ago and succeeded with his series about commissioner Javier Gallardo, a serious guy who has no objection to breaking the rules to solve cases in favor of the common good.
Things are happening in a luxury hotel in Madrid. Petty thefts have occurred in customer safes. The newly appointed Minister of the Interior has a passionate and secret affair with a bullfighter in one of the rooms. One of the directors of the establishment has started an affair with the concierge, a Nigerian widower and father of two daughters who is 20 years younger than his girlfriend. And another Nigerian, the maintenance manager, has dark plans that can endanger all the staff and customers of the hotel and also the rest of the city.
The director of the establishment (Andoni Ferreño) conveys his concerns to Javier Gallardo, played by Rodolfo Sancho. At the same time, Gallardo fears an attack by an Islamic terrorist group and all the clues lead him to that hotel. "The script fell into my hands and the first thing I did was read the book by García Hernán, which I loved, so I accepted the role because I had already fallen in love with that character, Javier Gallardo, who is stoic and hieratic and has great control of his emotions and thanks to that he has solved many cases", Sancho pointed out in an interview with La Vanguardia.
The actor explains that he was also impacted by "the story, because although terrorism is one of the vertices, it also addresses many other issues such as homophobia, love for children or relationships between people of different ages." The cast of Silver Dolphins is very choral, but Sancho assures that "the filming, which took place at the Madrid airport Marriot, was a success, because luckily there was a very good atmosphere."
Sancho had already worked with Elorrieta "in Paraíso, a television series, which coincidentally also took place in a hotel, in this case in the Dominican Republic, where I played a blind character. Later we coincided in Pact of Witches (2003) and Delfines de silver has been a true and happy reunion, because Elorrieta has spent 12 years exclusively dedicated to music and without filming".
For Sancho, this new collaboration with the director has been "very positive", because it has resulted in "a fast-paced thriller, with a lot of tension and very addictive". So much so, that the actor is "excited about the idea of shooting a saga about a commissioner like Bourne's." "There are already five books on Javier Gallardo and there is the possibility that new film installments will be made after Silver Dolphins," he concludes.
