In the best Hollywood style, in one of the huge studios of the Non Stop production company, in the town of Munro, a corner with powerful light fixtures, cameras, microphones and numerous technicians around, are the framework for the actress, singer and host Natalia Oreiroreceive the specialized press individually. The reason is to promote his latest film, “almost dead”, which has just been released in theaters. But it is enough to sit in front of the Uruguayan artist to see that she radiates her own light and energy, combined with an incandescent charisma.
Owner of a timeless face and resounding beauty, she is the protagonist of the second feature film as a director by actor Fernán Mirás, adaptation of “Bypass”, the 2012 Basque comedy, nominated for fifteen Goya awards, including Best Film and Best Screenplay. Mirás was able to garner more than positive reviews with his debut film “El peso de la ley”, and returned to the big screen with this film whose plot was substantially adapted for the local version. The plot combines love and friendship with the last step vital of any existence: death.
The plot centers on María (Oreiro), Javi (Diego Velázquez), Paula (Paola Barrientos) and Lucas (Ariel Staltari), all very close since childhood. But María’s life is turned upside down in every way when she suffers a fainting spell and an accident that almost cost her her existence. The clinical studies that they do on her are lapidary: she has barely a month to live.
Friends gather to accompany her twenty-four hours a day before her announced end, despite the fact that Paula is married to “the mute” (Alberto Ajaka) and has a young son (Filippo Carrozza). In those shared days, Javi and María discover that, during all their years of complicity and affection, they really were in love and he must decide between her love for her or her life with her girlfriend, Mía (Violeta Urtizberea ).
News: I saw the movie and, even though it’s a comedy, there’s a scene that moved me: her character’s dialogue about death, with her friend’s little son. It seems to be the key.
Natalia Oreiro: Ahahahah… (exclaims) One that arrives for another that leaves. That’s crazy! (And he pauses) He left me thinking about that scene.
News: Above all, in Mirás’s vision, the boy is…
Oreiro: Upside down. It’s just that, I think, children must see us, right? There is precisely a book by (Eduardo) Galeano called “Patas arriba (The School of the World Upside Down)” and he talks a little about that. Of how we are all turned around. Unlike the fresh look of a child, without any contamination, which we do have in the adult world. Yes, that scene is very touching. Because what he wants to know is that, what happens when you die?, where are you going to be? The animated film “Coco” talks about that, that you remain in the memory, in the heart, and when one is not reminded, you are no longer there. TO I really like the look that Mexicans have in relation to death. That celebration thing. Who remember their dead with music and dances. We come with that imprint, I don’t know, Italian or Spanish, which is sad. It would be great if we remembered the people with the best.
News: At another point, María affirms that the only certainty we have is that we are all going to die. But at the same time she invades us with fear when thinking about it.
Oreiro: It’s that we’re all going to die, but we don’t have it so present when we’re vital. What happens to María is that they tell her that in a month she is going to die and she thinks, “How could that happen if, until yesterday, I was riding a bicycle?” It seems that it is better to die and not find out because, what is to be done?, say goodbye?, to whom? It’s like a limbo, staying in the middle, and in reality the ones who end up suffering the most, I think, are those around her friends. The absence that will happen, but not yet. How do we contain this person without talking to him directly about it? they wonder and begin to change the way they treat him. The film is a delirious comedy, with a lot of black humor, particularly due to the director’s gaze, since Fernán is a person who has that humor, but at the same time he is deep and sensitive, because he is too. And it talks about things as simple as life, death, love and friendship.
News: Nothing more, nothing less.
Oreiro. How, in the face of the inevitable, we resort to humor. Sometimes you get fits of laughter in the most terrible places like at a wake.
It should be remembered that he is in a relationship with the musician Ricardo Mollo, they are the parents of Merlin Atahualpa, who is now eleven years old.
News: Besides acting, what do you do with your time?
Oreiro: When I remember, I breathe (laughs). It is that we forget to breathe and when we breathe consciously, what is a problem ceases to be. We live so alienated…(Thinks) A privileged person speaks. Sometimes I feel that I have a problem from a place of privilege and when I breathe and go down, if there is no solution, it is not a problem; and if you have it, neither. It’s going to happen. I think we run a lot. In my case, I run a lot. Between one job and another, I would like to have more free time, but then my personality makes me do many things at the same time. I’m very curious.
News: It’s mom, which is a great responsibility.
Oreiro: Completely. And how my perception of life in relation to motherhood changed me. It ran me out of the axis one hundred percent. My son teaches me more than I can teach him. But I became a person with fear. And it wasn’t.
News: They say that parents are concerned about their own existence, but above all or more about that of their children.
Oreiro: For their own, without a doubt, but to take care of someone else’s. I get on a plane and I start thinking horrible things, and that nothing can happen to me because my son needs me. At the same time, he is a free and independent being, he must be. I shouldn’t have that feeling mainly for him, because it’s a weight he doesn’t deserve. But the head… That’s why I say about breathing, saying: “Everything is fine”, enjoying. “Enjoy the little wind on your face,” my son tells me when we ride our bikes. It’s those simple things that the film also talks about. Like María, who gets emotional when she goes to the terrace of her childhood and sees the sunset. And she sees herself as a child, running, she remembers her mother there. It is a time without time, knowing that you are going to die and, suddenly, it is like life is in front of you.
News: It becomes evident when in another scene, the character looks at the almanac and the days and hours go by. And he suffers for every minute lost.
Oreiro: I have enough of that. I am a person who does not sleep much because as a girl they forced me to take a nap. Obviously I never did it when I grew up. I always felt like they were wasting my day! (laughs) I like to be awake, although I respect rest, not only from sleeping and in relation to physical work but also mental work.
News: Before, he said that he was a privileged person, but he is also very socially committed. She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
Oreiro: Yes. We were recently in the “El Volcadero” settlement in Paraná (Entre Ríos).
News: For those of us who don’t know, what responsibility does exercising that role imply?
Oreiro: Basically it is about putting a little light in places where there is a lot of darkness. So, we not only do things in the country where we live, but we also travel to other countries. I had to travel to Africa to share that experience with the rest of the world. UNICEF is precisely in places as soon as a tragedy happens or where, unfortunately, one lives submerged. Countries living in wars or natural catastrophes. UNICEF and the Red Cross are the ones that come out first and they do so with the resources of their partners who commit themselves not only to the causes that take place in their nations. Sometimes, perhaps selfishly, one could say: “But here there is also a need and a lot of it.” And a lot (he emphasizes). Unfortunately, for a long time. But in the same way that UNICEF works here with foreign resources, it does the same with those generated by Argentina.
