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#11 EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE
08/09/2006
The positive reaction Mientras tanto provoked in the Sala Perla was the logical counterpart of Diego Lerman's explicit intention to demand the active participation of the public, like Lucrecia Martel, in a film with no linear story-telling but with a mosaic of little stories where ordinary life, with its little dramas and its moments of joy, is represented in a poetic way.
Although the film takes place in Buenos Aires, its theme is universal: the name of the city and of the characters are almost never mentioned, and this absence of didactic explanations is exactly what makes it extremely pleasant to the viewer.
Here, every character is presented with his or her doubts and existential fears. Some of them believe in luck, others in destiny, but all of them need comforting —from their parents, friends, or from the many doctors present in the film, all of who repeatedly confirm that "everything will be fine".
Mientras tanto is suffused with this human warmth without which we would all feel like this poor fish on the sand we see in one scene. Hence the recurrent theme of physical contact and the many little presents the characters keep making one another —which is one of the many lovely details, all of which are subtly connected, through which Lerman manages to make whoever accepts to play his game feel clever, which is indeed the best proof of his own talent.
Do you think this way of challenging the spectator by depicting everyday events without explicitly pointing at a possible interpretation is characteristic of contemporary Argentinean cinema?
I know this has been said of Martel, who is a true genius, but I do not think we can talk about a tendency here. Right now, Argentina’s cinema is full of a vitality which I think is related to the specific personality of each director. Isn't this what cinema is all about, looking for one's own voice and abolish all formulas?
How did you work with your actors to obtain such natural performances?
We prepared pretty intensely during three months before shooting, not by rehearsing the scenes but by discussing the characters and improvising, so that eventually, the actors could give free rein to their characters in the most natural, realistic way.
Were all the small, pretty things the film teems with already in the script or did you get serendipitous while shooting?
Everything was written —the script is really the fruit of a long process of writing and rewriting, etc. This being said, new things always appear while shooting, especially when you work with children, animals and old people; whose presence made it more fun, more playful...
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