The definition of loneliness includes meanings such as the circumstance of being alone or without company. Or the feeling of sadness or melancholy due to the lack, absence or death of a person.
Nothing could be further from the luminosity transmitted by this actress with more than three decades of experience, one of the best Argentine cinema of recent times, who knew how to captivate diverse audiences around the world.
He starred in an unforgettable scene with Julio Chávez in “A wall of silence”. He was able to share the cast with his admirers Humberto Tortonese and Alejandro Urdapilleta in “Vivir mata”, he was part of “Life according to Muriel” and “El sueño de los héroes”, the latter directed by Sergio Renán.
Adrián Caetano trusted her for a decisive role in “A red bear”, she submitted to “Las grietas de Jara” and allowed herself to play the villain in “It’s not you, it’s me”. Her threesomes seem to chase her, she had to face two versions of Viggo Mortensen in “Todos tenemos un plan” and she agreed to give free rein to Adrián Suar’s whims in “Corazón loco”.
The most memorable television viewers usually remember her by five fundamental titles: “The sentence of Gabriel Doyle”, “De poeta y de loco”, “Vulnerables”, “Culpables” and “Locas de amor”.
In “For me, for you”, adaptation of a Broadway comedy and winner of the Tony Award, Villamil plays Masha, a renowned film and television actress, who returns to the old family residence where her brothers Vanya and Sonia are waiting for her. Her arrival will cause unexpected discomfort upon arriving with her new partner, an aspiring actor twenty years her junior.
“Para mí, para vos” marks Villamil’s return to the stage in a play since he did “Ella en mi cabeza” in 2005, a text authored and directed by Oscar Martínez. There the actress of “El secreto de la ojos de ella” shared the cast with Julio Chávez and Juan Leyrado.
Also a singer, with four recorded albums and a couple of Gardel Awards on her shelf, it is her acting facet that calls for the dialogue with NEWS, thanks to the imminent premiere of “Para mí, para vos” (like Turf’s song).
In the restaurant where he receives us to talk about the play directed by Héctor Díaz, in which Villamil shares a hilarious family plot with performers such as Paula Ransenberg, Laura Oliva, Boy Olmi, Ailín Zaninovich and Tupac Larriera, he chooses the table near a wall chaired by a black and white photo of Ricardo Darín. It is inevitable to think of the Oscar for “The Secret in His Eyes” and that beautiful love story called “The same love, the same rain.”
Neither before nor after, now is the time to start the talk.
News: 17 years have passed since the last time you went on stage to act, what seduced you from this play to decide to return to the theater?
Soledad Villamil: The truth is that I loved the text. First, I really liked that it was a comedy, I found it super attractive, I really wanted to do comedy again. In addition, the play is brilliantly written, it is very funny and crazy but also with some content as to what the meeting of three brothers means. That is where everything linked and the crisis that each one is going through is at stake. It seemed important to me that the work built a dialogue between these two registers.
News: In this very difficult year at the country level, did you think it was an ideal time to make a good comedy?
Villamil: I didn’t think so much in that direction, I actually love the genre and if I have a chance with such a good, smart and sarcastic piece that combines a lot of elements, here I go! Plus she’s really fun to act and that was very tempting.
News: Directed by Hector Diaz. Does it help that the director is also an actor?
Villamil: Absolutely, it helps a lot for me. Héctor is someone very close and who understands very well the springs of acting, its processes and how each one reaches his character in a different way. Also, particularly he is an excellent actor, but also a great comedian, so the look of him suits this material very well. He is very attentive to what works from his point of view.
News: After so long without going on stage with a text play, did the body have to recover that memory or was it as if it had never stopped doing theater?
Villamil: It was quite like riding a bike, getting back on it and remembering it instantly. Also with great enjoyment, because although I have been on stage for all these years, it was singing and the experience of the group, of searching the text, of building the characters is something very creative on a collective level. The circulation of that energy is very stimulating.
News: A colleague of his who is also a musician recently told me: “Acting is my job, but music is my passion.” Does something like this happen to you too or are they two parallel passions?
Villamil: For me they are two parallel passions and not so different from each other, in the sense that they are different ways of approaching interpretation. Because when I sing in some way I feel like an actress and I think of the shows in a theatrical way. The two are passions that greatly feed each other.
News: You sing different genres but tango is very present, does that have to do with something from your childhood, from your parents? Where did that love for tango come from?
Villamil: Not so much with my childhood, but the tango repertoire was born from a theater show called “Glorias porteñas”, a collective creation with a group that we did at the beginning of the 2000s. The action took place in a neighborhood club in the thirties and there we began to investigate the tango repertoire of that time and it was spectacular, because an impressive flow of songs and performers appeared, that’s when I fell in love with the genre.
News: Soon it’s the Cannes Film Festival and there will be “Cerrar los ojos”, the Víctor Erice film in which he acts. What can you tell us?
Villamil: I am very happy with the selection of the film for Cannes, it was an impressive experience. Erice is a legendary director and he also made a film that is a kind of cinematic legacy, a record of his connection to cinema. He is someone really from another era, walking on set was like filming forty years ago, he is super meticulous in his requests and his brand, a true directing artist. It was a beautiful experience.
News: What is the best thing about being an actress?
Villamil: I think that being an actress or actor gives you the chance to experiment with your own body and your emotions, different ways of feeling, doing and thinking. It opens up the spectrum a lot in terms of perspectives of seeing reality. Because when one plays a character, one necessarily gets involved to the point of having to see the world as the character perceives it, feel and think like him and not the way one would. That over the years means having experienced a lot of emotions and feelings that are not their own but strangely end up being a part, becoming flesh. It’s like living many lives in one.
News: Now you act professionally, but is there anything left of that girl who performed in her great-grandparents’ house with her brothers and their friends? Is that part more playful yet?
Villamil: Yes, I would tell you that it is almost what remains. I am increasingly interested in connecting with that, with the game, with what is happening at the moment. With experimentation, with something surprising me and taking me to an unexpected place. I would tell you that contrary to what I would have thought, that the path leads you to things that are gradually more certain or more secure, I believe that everything is increasingly uncertain and with an open door to what I can for myself become surprising.
News: You sing and act so the issue of the voice is a central issue. Do you dedicate any special care to it?
Villamil: Yes, I need to train it, take care of it, because the voice is a super sensitive instrument. If, for example, you go to eat in a place that has a lot of ambient noise, you inadvertently make an effort to talk about the noise, in those cases I return home and my voice feels tired. I know that later it will affect my acting and singing even more, so the voice is a very important instrument to take care of, not to obsess over because you can easily fall into the feeling that everything affects you but you have to be fond of it.
News: And the issue of memory? Is there a way to train her?
Villamil: They are those things that are trained doing them. If I don’t have to study a letter, a text or a song, it’s not that I’m going to study something by heart just because. But for example, now with the text “For me, for you”, the first day was a little more difficult, the second a little easier, and thus, it is a muscle that is being trained.
News: If you could travel back in time and see a musical artist who is no longer with us, what would it be? The options are Fede Moura, Luca Prodan, Flaco Spinetta, Goyeneche or Negra Sosa.
Villamil: Aww, can’t it be a dinner with everyone? (series). It’s just that I would love to meet each one you mentioned, they are very great artists and they have left a very important mark on me. I think I would have different individual questions prepared but absolutely all of them are heroes.
by Leonardo Martinelli
