In 2023, when Covid 19 is still resisting the expected transition from pandemic to endemic, the film El nido, which however was conceived in 2015 and filmed in 2021, is released in a context conducive to arousing, at least, curiosity. The debut feature of the Italian Mattia Temponi –in a Latin American crossover through Ventana Sur– has just been released at a good time and also has its own merits.
The film crosses terror and science fiction, with only two actors who intensely support the entire film: the Argentine Luciano Cáceres and the Italian Blu Yoshimi. On a planet Earth in the near future, he is Iván, a volunteer who takes care of Sara, an 18-year-old girl who has been bitten by humans and infected with an unknown virus. The characters must isolate themselves in a shelter with all the comforts, until the virus evolves. In that physical and psychological confinement, feeling the siege of death, a bond develops that is perhaps more dangerous than isolation and illness. The small place where the feature film takes place, which bets on minimalism and geometric figures (scenography by Giada Calabria) has a dramatic work of lighting and photography (Stefano Paradiso) and music by the Argentine Julián Vat, with tango notes between the sinister and the melancholic. Cáceres tells how El nido arose and was filmed, and possible readings.
—What previous experiences do you have of this crossover, not very frequent, between Argentine and Italian productions?
—I did some other productions with Italy, like the movie Cenerentola and a series that was the Italian version of Sin tetas no hay paraíso [Le due facce dell’amore]. The director of that series is the tutor director of this film, so when this project started Mattia made a list with three possible actors, and both on the casting list and on the list of the tutor director, I was. Finally, I was, chosen by the three parties.
—How has the proposal of this film been given new meaning, over the years?
—In May 2019, I received this script, which was from a science fiction horror movie. At that time, the masks, latex gloves and sanitizing seemed to me from a futuristic movie. When it was my turn to shoot, the entire set was in the same condition as the set. Mattias, also a script writer, had written this five years earlier. Is incredible. If the hotel chains knew a pandemic was coming, they might prepare their rooms as a refuge to comfortably spend the quarantine. In this story, a hotel chain prepares these shelters to shelter, with water, food, entertainment, treatment, everything that is needed to transit this virus. While the virus in the movie is more extreme, and borders on zombies, it’s crazy how it assimilated with a lot of things that were going on.
—How are rehearsals and filming organized?
—In the summer, I had premiered Desnudos en Mar del Plata, with great success, then I was kept in my house for five months; everything was closed; I only saw my girl. We had Zoom rehearsals two or three times a week, doing scene by scene. At that time, it was decided to make the film in Spanish, so Blu had to study all the lyrics in Spanish. Suddenly I got on a plane full of people; it stung. I was in Rome seven weeks. The first, after testing myself, isolated for eight days in an apartment, with food and everything: very similar to El nido. On the 8th at 5 in the morning he looked for me a car and we began to work six exhausting weeks, from seven in the morning until night. Crazy, a suffocating sensation, but the trio of Blu, Mattia and I was like a family: we lived together all the time, we didn’t interact with other people. In Italy, everything was more extreme. A chinstrap and mask were used, except at the time of acting.
—What are the procedures for an actor, in cinema, to build terror?
—With a good script and working on the genre. One as an actor must become an accomplice of the genre. Training is important to know the genres and have a huge resource box for the different ways of telling a story. In terror, even though the two characters are in the same place, I have to be an accomplice in things that I don’t have to see. It goes beyond what my character would feel or say at all times, but you have to strictly follow the script. The film is told in a certain way. It cannot be counted as art cinema, but it has its clichés, its seasonings. The nest is very covered in acting. Since it only has two actors, it is very theatrical, with all the resources of cinema.
—How do the notions of Good and Evil alternate in the two characters, marked by the fear of death and contagion between them?
—In extreme situations, the worst and the best of people come out. My character has that ambiguity, he’s going to change a lot. And also human misery appears. Without getting too far ahead, my character believes that he has something through holding onto a lie. But both are characters who are suffering. They go through Good and Evil. There is first confusion, and she is aggressive with him. Afterwards, a time of peace and possible coexistence. When things start to shut down, everything is altered again.
—Who do you recognize as your teachers in acting?
—Helena Tritek, Javier Daulte, Lito Cruz, and Alejandra Boero, my first teacher at the origin of what was Andamio 90. And I am also a re-student of all those who come to exchange with me: a kid who comes to do His first job can bring me a different imprint, it kindles the flame for me. In this trade, which has been done for thousands of years, you have to be attentive to new looks, you must not believe that you have it tied up, because you are left out.
—What senses have you seen in your trade during and after the most critical moments of the pandemic?
—At some point, I felt that it didn’t make any sense, that we were expendable, even though hours and hours of recorded fiction in all its forms were consumed. Later I revalidated my vocation and realized what I had to do, which is to entertain and something else: an experience and give reflection. We are that: we give a moment of an invented or historical reality, we tell a story, which is the most primitive. A story calms you down, opens your head, makes you create, choose a vocation, a trade. We are communicators and we open windows. I have many people who started studying because they saw me working or started reading because I named an author.
Past and future projects
AM
—The character in this film implies nuances, complexities, transformations. What others from your career could they associate?
—My character in Gato negro, the film by Gastón Gallo, implied telling more than 35 years of a person, from when he comes out of absolute misery in the sugar cane fields of Tucumán until he goes to conquer the world. On TV, it was a hinge, in The Chosen One, David Nevares Sosa, a lawyer who represented all sins; ambiguous, bisexual, with a terrible history with his mother and an impressive hatred for his father; he went from violence to tenderness constantly. And the last film I premiered, Desarmadero, now at the Gaumont and winner of four international festivals, also enters the horror genre, through a character who suffers from psychiatric issues, something I studied when I directed Leonor Manso in 4: 48 Psychosis.
—In February, you will also premiere Elsa Tiro, by Gonzalo Demaría, with Alejandra Radano and Josefina Scaglione, at the Teatro Regio. What is the project about?
—Last year I directed El ardor and now again I am very focused on directing. The play is based on the fact that Eugene O’Neill, a great American playwright, lived in the port area of Buenos Aires in 1910, surrounded by prostitutes and sailors. In Demaría’s work, O’Neill’s wife believes that the first piece he wrote coincides with the first porn film filmed, which was made in Buenos Aires that year. In other words, the guy who received a Nobel, with all the prestige, has a past with porn and with Argentina.
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