Elena Martín is very excited to participate with her second feature film, Creatura, in the Cannes Film Festival's Fortnight, where it has received a magnificent reception in the official screening this morning. "It's something you fantasize about when you're in the process of making a film and everyone wants a good premiere, but for a festival of the size of Cannes to really offer the opportunity to do it here totally changes its path," the filmmaker proudly comments. 31-year-old actress and filmmaker from Barcelona.
Shot in Catalan on stages in La Escala and with a script co-written with Clara Roquet -which premiered Libertad at Critics' Week two years ago-, the film "talks about a woman who tries to reconnect with pleasure and understand how her desire and what are the external and internal effects that have been building the ideas that you have preconceived in relation to your own body and sex".
And for this, the story is divided into three different stages, going back to the time when Mila was a child, later in her adolescence, and then in her adulthood, avoiding at all times falling into the red line with which she could have collided with such a delicate subject. "We were fully aware that making a portrait of childhood sexuality was something very risky. To begin with, there are practically no cinematographic references. There are more focused on adolescence and with Clara we were watching them because it was important for us to feed on it."
Martín assures that they only found a five-minute short film set in childhood, but "the germ of the film arose from the desire to portray this vital moment because all the taboos, shame and misunderstandings already begin at such an early age", points out the director, whose debut feature Júlia Ist (2017) caught the attention of critics. "A child who is discovering his body in a way that has nothing to do with adult sexuality and begins to receive external inputs that are prejudices about his own experience begins to acquire shame and complexes and deep down this becomes a disconnection with the body," he says. In her research work, Roquet and Martín interviewed adults and some of the answers that shocked her were: "I have never looked at my vulva" or "I have never masturbated." In this regard, she wonders aloud: "How can it be, if everyone washes their armpits? It's something I don't understand."
And he qualifies that for both it was "very important not to approach this subject from the morbid, not to try to be groundbreaking or irreverent because we did not want to be guided by the way in a matter like this. The most radical thing was to be as honest and tender as possible and That is what makes the people who have seen the film have been able to connect, since the story has a desire for reconciliation," he continues.
Martín insists that when a girl discovers that she has a vulva and that it tickles "she does not feel shame or guilt, it is the look of adults who judge it as something that is not right that generates". Creatura opens with a young couple who move into her family's summer home in the Empordà. She tries to make her sex with her boyfriend special, but she has trouble achieving pleasure. Oriol Pla, who plays Mila's boyfriend, tells her that he feels like little of a man and little by little they distance themselves from her, which causes even more anxiety in the woman.
Creatura also highlights the distant relationship that the protagonist has with her mother (Clara Segura) since she was little and the love for a father (Alex Brendemühl) whom she is curious to see naked. And she defends a cast of actors "who have such a difficult double capacity to make drama and at the same time give a bit of perspective that sometimes gives irony." Directing and starring in this second feature film has required a lot of effort and commitment, both physical and emotional, something she doesn't plan to repeat for a long time.
If Julia Ist was born out of a need, that of showing the Erasmus university experience, "Creatura came out of desire". And it was not clear to her that she would be the protagonist, but in the end she decided to expose herself "to try to understand what my character feels". And she shows it with all the naturalness in the world. The film already has a release date in Spain: September 8.
