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lla was finally on vacation in the south of France ("a very unpretentious France, deep in the countryside near Carcassonne") and the last thing she was thinking about was the phone ringing and receiving a call from the Minister of Culture in person to tell her she had won the National Cinematography Award: "The last thing, it was the last thing I was thinking about." Period. "Neither late nor early, I didn't expect it, although other years they had told me I was on the lists (of contenders). These are things that come and I appreciate, but it doesn't occur to me to think about them."
She was on vacation and it was Sunday afternoon. Her Radio 3 program, the second installment of Someone Should Prohibit Sunday Afternoons, had just aired, in which Isabel Coixet (Sant Adrià de Besòs, 1960), between paragraphs by Cortázar and poems by Karmelo Iribarren, wonders who could have invented Sunday afternoons with their depressing drone of a radio broadcast and the rest that is silence, and anguish because time passes and the sand minutes slip through the neck of the clock laughing at your illusion of being.
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The phone rings and it's us from Barcelona to ask her what remains of the Barcelona at the forefront of arts and culture in general. Is Barcelona what it used to be? "Not at all. Barcelona is withering."
But let's leave this for the end, as it's very bitter, and let's start with Benidorm. It Snows in Benidorm, her next premiere, which will take place at the opening of Seminci this Saturday, October 24, and will also earn her the Golden Spike of Honor from the Valladolid festival. Benidorm, the setting where any event is possible? "Benidorm has a real fascination, which is linked to the kitsch and the camp. It's a place where singers, repertoires, things that were fashionable years ago, triumph, and they do so in a parodic and caricaturesque way.
It's a Shangri-La where two separate worlds coexist, that of Spanish retirees who don't speak a word of English and that of foreigners who have lived there their whole lives carpe diem without speaking a word of Spanish; it has an impressive environment and a vertical urbanism à la Copacabana that fascinates architects. I have portrayed a very cinematic Benidorm, a melting pot of chimeras of many disparate people, strippers, cooks, retirees, police…"
And there in the middle Sylvia Plath, cult poet, cursed, so that they can say again that she is dense, intense, Byzantine... "I'm not going to give up my references, I don't give a damn what they say. Sylvia Plath lived in Benidorm for three months in the 50s, a honeymoon, a very happy time of her life (which ended in suicide after repeated attempts), and there she wrote many poems, and there is a police officer (Carmen Machi) who lives in the same place where she lived, and searches for that other possible Benidorm. Yes, we have everything, from Yes Sir, I can boogie to Sylvia Plath's poems, because that's what I like: to ride from pop culture to another supposedly more elevated one, which for me are always the same."
It's her personal stamp. Those criticisms that 30 years ago made her cry – she has confessed – also made her great, and isn't it that she projects a false image of a confident person, full of herself? She is about to tell me, look Pita, leave me alone, and I feel it like a tingling through the airwaves; but since she knows that this looks terrible, she sighs and replies: "I no longer care about being talked about. It's very easy today not to see what doesn't interest you. And for people to waste a minute of their life criticizing my excess of culture, what do you want me to tell you, it makes me laugh (and indeed she laughs). Fortunately, I think there are many more people who love these things. But, really, what they say about me doesn't keep me awake at night."
I like to ride from pop culture to another supposedly more elevated one, which for me are always the sameIt has been said of her cinema (rightly) that it is read, that it is a cinema of words, sometimes dedicated ex professo to literature. And when we least expected it, in her latest film, Elisa and Marcela, a fascinating story, a novel to be written that delved into the unarchived memory of two homosexual women in 1885, Coixet opted for the silent image. "I made the film I wanted to make, approaching the story in a very visual way, because it also seemed very complicated to imagine how these women spoke at that time. But the story was not exhausted with the film, I am sure it will be repeated, because it is also an endless matter."
A storyteller of women's stories
She has been awarded the National Cinematography Award by a statutorily equal and female-majority jury, and then the voices of discord resurface saying that Coixet reproaches the new feminism for... what does she reproach it for, precisely this quota thing? "I have always very clearly defended the quota, which seems to me a way to recover a debt from the past, which systematically ignored women. Women should not be asking for equal pay but higher salaries than men, and men should be grateful that we ask for equality and not revenge. But look, the movement is demonstrated in action. I was a feminist at 5 years old, because I was very aware of the contempt we women received, I remember it very clearly. Why do you give me a manicure kit if I asked for three books? Why can't I be what I want to be? Why do I have to get married and have children? Hey, this makes no sense! I thought and believed it naturally. And since I started making films, I have always been clear that I like to tell women's stories."
A jury that has highlighted her freedom, courage, nonconformity, versatility, international projection, generosity with new generations, commitment to equality and social causes. Phew. Where does she recognize herself most? "It's true that I go my own way, everyone chooses a path, or perhaps the path chooses you, but I remember being like that since the schoolyard; one is born like that, different, but doesn't plan it."
International: "It's not intentional: it has always seemed very normal to me to go out there. In fact, it surprises me that people don't do it. And yes, perhaps I have been the one who has gone out there most systematically…" Bravery? "More than bravery, I would say that I am very aware of the difficulties I get myself into, and suddenly I find myself there and hellooooo? Who would have thought!" Social causes, "well, if I can do what's in my power to help, if I can serve, I'm up for anything. It's true that I've done many things for free for NGOs, but it also seems like a way to learn." Generosity: "I support new generations because it's something that didn't happen to me. I believe my duty is to stimulate and push new creators to take the plunge.
I remember asking for advice from established directors when I was a teenager and leaving saying, I'd better forget it; I even heard the fateful 'You'll never make it!' I, on the other hand, like to tell them the truth, the hardship involved in dedicating oneself to this, but how fascinating it is, and encourage them." Coixet will invest the prize money (30,000 euros) in novel projects, "I have so many on the table that the problem is how to make it enough for all of them." Her new film is produced by the Almodóvar brothers, it's her third collaboration with El Deseo, "yes, it is, but I financed my first two films myself, don't get confused."
Men should be grateful that we ask for equality and not revengeOkay. So we get to the bitter dessert: withered Barcelona. "For some years now, this has been an impoverished city, where the precariousness resulting from the 2008 crisis has not led to new cultural alternatives, as usually happens with crises. And I'm not even referring to the turbulent world of public resources, which I've never quite understood what it obeys, but to the receptivity of cultural manifestations in general."
"Look, we are at a moment when things are said with such impetus and contempt for the other, that people are afraid to say what they think, and they keep quiet. But believe me, nothing happens! I only ask that those who don't agree with me don't get angry, that they don't pay attention to me if they don't want to, but that they don't grow in victimhood. People immediately feel hurt and despised, what can we do about it."
Things today are said with such impetus and contempt for the other, that people are afraid to express what they think, and they keep silentNothing. Maybe sit down and enjoyIt snows in Benidorm, when it arrives in theaters on November 13. Where to? I don't know.