Merli Marlowe: 'She is crazy, this Gaulish woman!'

"I've done a lot of hard work, but I'm happy to have taken the leaps of faith that have allowed me to end up dedicating myself to my passions: being a screenwriter and film director and, also, singing in a band." Night has fallen and, after enjoying some tapas and going out to smoke a Gauloise Rouge, Merli Marlowe crowns her visit to the Bar with a Gimlet. The chords of As cores de Abril, by Vinicius and Toquinho, resonate and the patroness smiles. "The truth is I've always been quite kamikaze and very dramatic," she adds.

She learned French because as a young woman she wanted to live installed in a perennial Nouvelle Vague film, "and reading subtitles wasn't enough for me, I needed to understand everything, to get completely into it." She studied Political Science "and, when I finished my degree, I knew that was what I didn't want to do." And she started studying film. However, twists of fate led this woman from Lleida to work for the European Commission, in Brussels.

"It was an incredible salary and you really felt part of something, but after a while I saw that that wasn't my world either." The call of the celluloid intensified. "I decided to take the first leap of faith, leave the comfort of a stable and very well-paid job and start collaborating with the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique". Her family and friends couldn't believe it. "They told me I was doing something crazy, but I believe that when something ends you have to turn the page, take steps and assume the consequences." Elle est folle, cette gauloise!, as they would say in the Astérix comics.

After ten years in the Belgian capital, she ended up in Barcelona, where she joined the creative department of an advertising agency. "That had good things, but in the end that stage also came to an end and I took another leap of faith, to be able to dedicate myself entirely to my projects."

Thus, she has directed the series OFF Comedy (which can be seen on Filmin), has written the script for the fiction podcast Mix97 and the series Tot anirà bé (TV3), has developed several series proposals that are on the table of different platforms, is part of the team of the literary podcast Los lanzallamas, is working with Lorena Fuster from the UB on a documentary about the harpist Esmeralda Cervantes, illegitimate daughter of Ildefons Cerdà, and is writing the next film by filmmaker Javier Polo, which she anticipates will be "a truly thrilling thriller". And, when she has time, she promises to delve into the script for the film adaptation of Joan Perucho's Les històries naturals.

Punk in a Courrèges ensemble

Impeccably dressed in a Courrèges miniskirt and shirt ensemble, Merli Marlowe transforms on stage. "I have a conscience, but I ignore it," she laughs. It's her other nature as a music lover, with a special emphasis on the 60s.

She has been a DJ and has managed the small music label Marlowe Records. But she also takes to the stage, first with the Mortettes (a kind of tribute to the British Headcoatees) and now fronting Les Rencards, a powerful Barcelona beat & roll band, with lyrics in French, "because writing in that language is something I had wanted to do for a very long time, with the added bonus of being able to write about the most mundane aspects, sex, depravity, partying, in exquisite French." Pure follie.

They have just released a new album, Angles morts (Groovie) ---"the title reflects the dual nature of vulnerability and danger that we all have in one context or another of life"---, produced by Marc Tena, and which they will present on June 27 at the Almo2Bar in Gràcia. There you can witness Merli's metamorphosis. How this modest and well-dressed girl turns into a pure stage animal. Punk in chic clothes and shouted with verses worthy of the best La Fontaine.

The trap of ease

"Barcelona is a very easy city to live in. Everything here is comfortable," the artist reasons. She sips her Gimlet. "It's excessively comfortable ---she adds---, and that makes us end up becoming bourgeois and this city lacks stimuli, things stop happening culturally and it becomes superficial."

--- Nevertheless, there is still a good substratum of initiatives cooking here...

The parishioner frowns. "Maybe so," she replies, "but I believe that right now there is no longer an underground in Barcelona. At least, not one comparable to what there was until a few years ago." And she confesses that what essentially unites her to this place "is the people, my people."

--- What you're saying almost sounds like another possible leap into the void of yours, perhaps looking towards new places.

The chords of Senza paura, by Vinicius, Toquinho, and Ornella Vanoni suddenly burst into the air. "Without fear," the song says. Merli Marlowe gives a sideways smile and orders another Gimlet.

--- You never know--- she replies, enigmatically.

And winks.