Isabel Coixet inaugurates Seminci with a beautiful and vital film about death and against gentrification

Isabel Coixet has built her own universe. One with his rules, with his style and hater-proof. If the filmmaker’s style has often been criticized by her detractors for being intense or for the use of resources such as voice-over, Coixet has always carried out an exercise of incorruptible freedom, reaffirming herself as a personal filmmaker who has marked recent Spanish cinema. She did it since there were hardly any female directors in the industry, and she continues to do it today, when she has nothing to prove to anyone, but she remains as faithful to her principles as ever.

He does it again with three goodbyesthe beautiful and vital film with which the Seminci of Valladolid has inaugurated. An adaptation of the novel by the Italian writer Michela Murgia, an anti-fascist scourge who left, before dying of cancer, a collection of stories in which she talked about her illness. Coixet takes several of them to build a moving film that is full of their aesthetic and ethical traits. In three goodbyes go back to the times of My life without me (not only because of the theme of the disease) and mixes with wonderful freedom drama, humor, a joyful look and enjoyment and even a turn to the fantastic. With his voice-over, with his detailed shots of a Rome that looks beautiful and with three actors, Alba Rohrwacher, Elio Germano and Francesco Carril, who fit perfectly into the Coixetian universe.

Get a movie that works as an oxymoron. A portrait of death and cancer that becomes a vitalist story, and she recognizes that “that was the challenge.” “I didn’t want to take the viewer to a funereal world. Obviously, there are many things that we have ignored in the film. There is no explicit look at the disease. All the things we see are details to make it believable. But we don’t recreate it. It also contributes to the fact that the city is also very present and it is a city that has an almost incomprehensible life among the ruins,” he says.

three goodbyes It ends up becoming a love letter from the filmmaker to Rome, and also against the processes of gentrification and mass tourism that are destroying the cities. “The Airbnbization and TripAdvisorization of the world may help many people and many businesses, but it is very cruel, unfair, and sometimes has nothing to do with reality. This was not in the book, but I was very clear that it should be in the movie because it bothers me deeply. Suddenly you see businesses, small restaurants that open with an effort and that cannot pay someone to come and eat. And you see people taking advantage, eating and then criticizing That whole world horrifies me,” he explains.

There are even more or less explicit nods to his own cinema. For example, the restaurant where Elio Germano’s character works is called Endlesslike the Gino Paoli song that became the musical leitmotif of My life without me. Coixet confesses that he was even tempted to include a new version of the song, but that one cannot fight against what it is. “You have your style, your signs and your quirks,” she says, knowing that her personality “is in every frame.”

“One of the things that made me hesitate to make this film was the vision of Rome. And in some way, when she says ‘I would like to show you my Rome’, it is me saying the things that I like about Rome. Just like the final part. That reflection on why we spend our lives trying to find meaning in something that has no meaning, why there are so many whys. Obviously the basis is Michela’s, but there are many things of mine. Like the ice cream scene, which is not It wasn’t even in the first script we wrote. That’s why I think Alba is the perfect actress for this role, because she is capable of showing all the sensations at the same time. We are seeing the pleasure. We are seeing the children’s part. We are seeing that he is enjoying something that very soon he will not be able to enjoy,” he says.

Regarding the freedom that this film breathes, she assures that she considers herself “a very free person”: “It is a freedom that also has to do with knowing how to defend things that do not belong in the squad, nor in the bevel or anywhere. I am also happy to defend to the death things that many people told me not to, like the dove’s funeral, which many people love and you realize that they connect and you think, well, I wasn’t that wrong. You have to exercise that freedom. I am teaching film graduates who have already made short films, who are already writing their first feature film, and I tell them that the only thing they cannot take away from us is freedom. Forget about tradition. Forget about whether the voice-over is yes or no, whether the third act or the fourth act. Be free and be free now that you are still in college. You will have time, if you are lucky, to have the option to give in.”

What also always happens is that the performers speak wonderfully about Coixet’s filming. A director is precise like a clock, who meets the times and the days and with whom everyone wants to repeat. The director is humorous and says that it is because she invites them to eat all the time, but when she is influenced she points to something that also influences. “I listen to them. I see where they’re going. I see how they feel on set. Just listening to them, in the end that’s what it is.”