“Intrigue. Love. Madness,” announces the 1950s-style poster of “The runners”the comedy of Nestor Montalbano which opens tomorrow, starring Carola Reyna, Diego Capusotto and Alejandra Flechner. This time, the director’s singular and relaxed humor (“Cha Cha Cha”, “Everything for two pesos”, “I am your adventure”, “Birds flying”, “A handful of hairs”) shows a new facet, played between melodrama, homage and parody. And it raises a first intrigue: yes Carola Reyna She’s not one of the runners, so who could she be?
We spoke with the director and the actress:
Nestor Montalbano: In tribute to my old man, who was already very ill, I accompanied him, and we spent it watching movies from the ’40s and ’50s, remembering the emotions that they aroused in us when we saw them in the town’s cinema. I’m from a small city, Nueve de Julio. One day I found in the chicken coop a toy road car, from when I was six years old, all rusty. I fixed it, showed it to my old man, and I wanted to make a movie that would immerse me in those times. Doing it allowed me to express those emotions, beyond my madness.
NM: Yes, he sings that song from “Anguish of a Love” dressed as Burt Lancaster in “OK Corral.” I myself searched for the Wyatt Earp hat until I found it. And I also painted the painting that dominates the room.
Q.: The portrait of a woman with a past, as in classic melodramas. But in addition to those winks there is a gender issue, a double homicide committed by a dead man, a rancher who sings “La Internacional” and a Ministry of Agroscience, something like the Inta elevated to a Ministry. All good Montalbano.
Carola Reyna: I read the script and I didn’t understand what the code would be. But the proposal was very attractive, stimulating, a period film, working with Capusotto again (we had a “normal” marriage in “India Pravile”, by Mario Sabato), and above all there was Montalbano’s enthusiasm. It was a risk, but when you play in what you like, it is a cushioned risk. Besides, I always get strange things, played things.
P.: Like “Hidden Color”, where all the girls had very little wardrobe, to put it discreetly.
CR: There was something uncomfortable about that experience, which was my first film. Another, “The Monzón Case”, where I felt very responsible for representing Alicia Muñiz dead, almost naked, and yet it was an extremely fun filming, because the director Gabriel Arbós applied a lot of humor. I also got to play “The Lover of Silent Movies”, with Alfredo Alcón. In one scene my character falls into the water, they brought in a stuntwoman who didn’t know how to swim! And who jumped into the river? I may not be Tom Cruise but I did my own stunt.
Q.: And how did you enter the code of “The Runners”?
CR: I discovered that it is a comedy done with total seriousness, a very anachronistic game and at the same time very Argentine. I entered, because in art you don’t do things to see what happens, you do them to do them. And it seemed like a flare of life to me.
NM: This is a film that I consider kind. If you go with a flat heart, it caresses you.
CR: And the costumes are great, I look like Kim Novak in “Vertigo”. My character, who has just lost her father, travels on behalf of the Ministry to a ranch where they will make a donation of land, but she is received in a hostile manner, a drive for life then arises that leads her to investigate, until she is finally able to confess. who missed the train, who lost his life, like so many people with things never assumed, not externalized. At the Jujuy Festival, where we presented her, an older man, referring to my character, said something beautiful: “and at last she was free.”
Q: It’s a movie made with friends and relatives, right?
NM: With one of the producers, Marcelo Schapces, and the art director Rodolfo Pagliere, we are graduates of the same Enerc class, friends for 40 years. A cousin plays the policeman, my son-in-law plays the owner of the bar (the same bar where Leonardo Favio filmed a scene from “Juan Moreira”, how exciting!), my daughter-in-law plays the character of Carola, my son Enzo plays the music. He is a rocker, but I made him study the classics of that time, I told him “I want to go there,” and he listened to me.
Q.: The music is very good, very much in the style of the Hollywood melos of the ’50s.
NM: There’s also Norman Briski, opening the story. Another friend who makes it easy for you, Diego Capusotto, same generation, we are like brothers, only he is a rocker and I am fatter. With him I feel what old movies transmit to me recycled today. We did “I am your adventure”, “Birds flying”, “Chasqui”, “Don’t cry for me, England”, “Soledad y Larguirucho” (I did the live part and García Ferré the drawings, a divine guy who made me understand something more of life). And Marcela Potente, the co-writer, is my wife. We fell in love when we were nine years old, like Messi and Roccuzzo. She was the pharmacist’s daughter and I was the baker’s son. We still have fun with the same things, this movie I think sums up our feelings. I worked with my old man until I was 26, when he told me “This is not your thing, go make movies.” By then I was making amateur films, making the commissioner, the mayor, the whole town act.
Q.: Then came the formal studies, the Meliès prize, the two scholarships in France, the guidance of Jean Claude Carrière and Joyce Buñuel, and all the rest. And now?
CR: Now, enjoy it and then we’ll see. There is no formula. If it goes well for you, great. Meanwhile, I do “Okasan”, my self-managed one-man show, and I start a play produced by Adrián Suar, with Leyrado, Belloso and Paola Krum. I would have liked to do a second season of “Family Therapy.” We enjoyed it a lot with Boy Olmi, but, although it was well received, there is no second season.
N.M.: And we, if this doesn’t go well, if one day we can’t make more films, we will return to Nueve de Julio. The bakery is like the funeral home, it has customers every day.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
