After El ventre del mar, Agustí Villaronga really wanted to carry out Loli Tormenta, a humanist story in a comedy key that he wrote with Mario Torrecillas. He shot it in the summer in various locations in Barcelona, already very ill with cancer, which ended his life on January 22 at the age of 69, right on the day of the Gaudí awards gala. Last Friday, his posthumous film arrived in cinemas starring Susi Sánchez in the role of an all-terrain grandmother, a woman who had achieved fame as an athlete some time ago and who now has to take care of her two grandchildren and of a mortgage left to him by his daughter when she died. All three live in a modest house on the outskirts of the Catalan capital. When Loli begins to enter an advanced process of Alzheimer's, the minors do everything in their power not to separate them from their grandmother.
Winner of the Goya for best supporting actress for Cinco lobitos, Susi Sánchez speaks by phone with La Vanguardia after returning from shooting in Peru Reinas, by Klaudia Reynicke.
I had not worked with Agustí Villaronga before. How did you get the project?
I knew Agustí because of his exquisite work and I was looking forward to working with him. It was such a great admiration that he felt for his work that he dreamed of the possibility of meeting him and working with him. Life brought me the gift. I was very lucky, even if it was in those terrible circumstances, because the filming was terrible, seeing the suffering of a person like him, who did not complain but was fatal. The film was shot in those conditions and with temperatures of 40 degrees in a house where there was barely room for the equipment... The working conditions of the shooting were very tough because the film was 'I had to do yes or yes at that time. In fact, there was no time to rehearse, and Agustí apologized to me for that. It was hard to detach myself, being a comedy, from the suffering of the director. But I can tell you that I learned a lot from this experience.
How did they meet and how did they approach the film?
I was closing the D'A Film Festival with Cinco lobitos and he came to see the film because a mutual friend had told him to go see me, as the star of his next film had fell ill and had some urgency to find a replacement. We talked for a bit and I told him to take the time he needed, not to feel pressured by me, but that I was available. I read the script and I wanted to be in that movie and go on the journey with him. Having the experience of making a character that is like a comic was very appealing to me. And we discovered it between the two of us. I was very dedicated.
She seems to be specializing in granny roles. What attracted you most to your character?
At my age, it's up to me (laughs). What attracted me most about Loli was her vital ability to get ahead in life. She's a woman who doesn't think, it's pure impulse, a survival instinct to push forward like in the races she explains she used to do. There is a similarity between overcoming challenges in sport and in life and I was attracted to that capacity for such great love for life and the purity of things. I like how she's honest and how she treats the kids and takes care of them, the fact that she's a fighter. And a key reference was Agustí and the moment he was living.
The film also talks about the drama of Alzheimer's, a disease he has already tackled in other projects.
I have known about the disease for a long time because my mother was in a nursing home for the last three years of her life and when I went to see her there were all kinds of cases. I was very much guided by Agustí's vision, because his mother had Alzheimer's, it was a disease that was very close to him and he wanted to talk about it. But there is also the drama of old age and childhood as useless elements, because our society sees us that way. The adults because we no longer give up and the children because they still don't give up. And there is a complaint about this, the thing is that it is told with humor.
How was the last time you saw Agustí? Could you say goodbye to him?
After the shoot I saw him again in Madrid. He had already started the chemo process again, and was almost finishing editing the film. It's that he died so he finished assembling it. He made an incredible effort. I said goodbye to him in Madrid. I thanked him and gave him a hug. I left very worried because my interest, more than knowing how the work had turned out, was to know how he was doing. We also had a good time during the shoot. He was very vital and involved you in everything.
