we all know who it is mercedes moran, in this case we do not need to click on the bio because it is stuck in our heads dragging the r’s in “La Ciénaga”, sending blessings like Pastora Elena in “El Reino”, the Roxy from “Gasoleros” or the owner of the best auction in “Moon of Avellaneda”. I ask her if after “Betibú” she understood journalists better, she smiles and replies that she probably would have been a good reporter.
In “Start the dance”, the charming film directed by the Argentinian based in Madrid Marina Seresesky that has just been released, Mercedes is Margarita, a veteran compadrita and appetizing in a hilarious, tender and sentimental tango road movie. Together with a harsh Dario Grandinetti turned ex-glory of the tango and Jorge Marrale as his endearing First (and only) Bandoneón, Pichuquito, they make up an unexpected trio to laugh and cry.
The need to tell adult stories, curiosity as a shortcut to fear, the cultural power of a puteada, a painted black tooth and the revelation of Lucrecia Martel in this talk with NEWS.
News: A few years ago, “Le Week-End” was released, a film that paid homage to Bande à part de Godard, and a local critic called it “geriatric cinema”. Does this prejudice persist or do we miss that adult audience in theaters?
Mercedes Moran: My choice always goes through a story that moves me, that makes me want to participate, as an actress of my age, I find it interesting and not so often that the protagonists of a story are over 50 or 60 years old. I think that’s going to help bring adult audiences back to the movies, especially with movies like “The Dancing Begins” that have a proper administration of nostalgia. Because I don’t like to join that idea that all past times were better, but Argentines have nostalgia in our DNA.
News: The phenomenon of nostalgia is very strong throughout the world, with a shower of autobiographical films. Do we Argentines live more attached to that tango pain of no longer being?
Moran: Just the day before yesterday I had the enormous pleasure of being able to see Héctor Alterio, listen to him say the lyrics of some tangos and also recite Spanish poets like León Felipe, there is something of nostalgia that when it is in its right measure it is very sweet, it is not a downer. In “Empieza el baile” there is a lot of humor on the edge, because these characters are on the verge of decadence, with a self-perception of their virtues that makes them very funny in the public eye. It seems interesting to me to talk about how past glory is lived, in an old age that is not so syrupy but rather forgotten, and how love, friendship and joy can be perceived in three elderly people who meet again with the weight of death. life above. This is how they embark on this kind of road movie, a trip similar to those of their old tours. Being able to compose those characters that are a little older than us was a lot of fun.
News: Margarita, her character, is a big lady but very flirtatious. Is the cinema indebted to the exploration of female desire after the sixties?
Moran: I think it’s something that we’re claiming only now because our culture always told us that after a certain age everything ended and we became waste. That “what’s up grandma?” thing keeps happening a lot. Grandma the balls! (laughs). I am a happy and proud grandmother, but the concept that after a certain age the desire disappears is terrible, but I think that all that is fortunately changing. It seems to me that, to tell other stories, women need directors who have gone through these stages personally or through a mother, a sister or a friend, because everything is different from how they usually tell it, nothing is the same at 40 as it is at 60. Although Personally, I am living this moment in a very exceptional way, I know that it is not the norm and I am very open to doing this type of character. I don’t want to put that burden on myself to figure out how to be 5 minutes younger. Both this character and the one in the film “Elena knows” about the novel by Claudia Piñeyro that will be released this year, are full of wisdom and reflection on how the passage of time affects you. Because death is present, in a moment you start to lose your friends or you find that they age badly.
News: With regard to “Elena knows” you have already worked several times with your daughter Mey Scápola and now they repeat in that film. What is that society like when it comes to being colleagues?
Moran: Most of the time it has not been our idea, we were invited to that, when it is like that it is barbaric because it is a meeting that takes place as if it came out of the family kitchen, but assuming different roles and we love it. Objectively I can say that both Mey and Manuela (Martínez, Oscar’s daughter) are actresses with whom I like to work. The same thing happens to me with other colleagues like Érica Rivas, with whom I had never acted until “Elena knows”.
News: Mey was precisely directed in the theater in the play by Nora Ephron, “Love, pain and what do I wear”. Ephron is dead and they are still questioning her irony applied to different complicated situations in life. Do you think that women are required more in humor?
Morán: More is demanded of women with everything, from now The figure of the capocomico has no comparison with a woman, grace was a masculine heritage, but luckily those things are changing. Especially now that a certain humor has faded, it’s not funny because she was hiding a mess, a mockery. When they say, “And now what are we laughing at?” Well, look at the greats from Chaplin onwards, none of them based their humor on laughing at others.
News: You are a great whore, it is scientifically proven by the Campanella movies. When talking about memorable whores, Ranni or Luppi appear. For a woman to exercise the art of bitching is almost an act of cultural resistance?
Moran: But yes, of course! (series). I’m not much of a bitch in life, but the bitches of my characters have become known. Campanella is convinced that I am one of the best insulters and he writes me some anthological whores. Oh really, I think like you that he is part of the resistance. When I listen to Negra Vernaci she makes me irresistibly funny and I like to see the discomfort she causes. The same as the inclusive language, you put a girl insulting or talking with the E and they jump like crazy because they feel that those language privileges are not for us.
News: Speaking of different languages, it is inevitable to think of La Ciénaga, a film that changed Argentine cinema. I read that at first her character had cost him because she was a very subdued woman. How does she remember it now and what world did Lucrecia Martel open up for her?
Moran: For me, the meeting with Lucrecia was a before and after. I’ve been lucky enough to work with good, very good, excellent directors, but when you meet an artist something definitely changes, it’s something else, what were previously confirmations suddenly become revelations. And I finished appreciating that language over time. I admit that I had an enormous intuition because I thought that I had come from making “Gasoleros”, so the choice of that absolutely unconventional script with an unknown Lucrecia was to put me on a path very different from the one I had traveled, recently over the years. and the passage of the film through the world I managed to finish understanding it. Later I was lucky enough to work with Martel again in “La niña santa” and I already knew where we were going, she opens your mind, I understood Kaurismäki after Lucrecia. It is a long way of learning cinema. I started when I was big and it gave me that crush on maturity that hits you hard. Now I want to do theater, so probably after a movie that awaits me, the next thing is to return to that love, I’m going to start looking for material.
News: Regarding love, you are about to premiere Norma, the film directed by Santiago Giralt in which you are a scriptwriter for the first time. There a woman loses her lifelong employee and that leads her to a radical change. At this point, is it worse to lose her husband or her employee?
Moran: Losing the employee, without a doubt. Husbands come and go! But a good employee doesn’t just let go (laughs).
News: She is a fearless actress. In the profession she is afraid of something?
Morán: I am afraid of everythingevery time I start a project I am very restless, assaulted by the idea that I am going to repeat myself or I will not be up to the task, I always think that everything that came out of me was a fart and that they are going to realize it. But trying something I’ve never done is what keeps my desire alive, what makes me face fear and go through it.
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