Twelve years after
Eversmile, New Jersey, Carlos Sorin makes a winning
comeback as a director with
Minimal Stories, a road movie set in Patagonia.
The film won the Special Prize at San Sebastian 2002 and a Second Coral Award
at the Havana Film Festival. We met Carlos Sorin at the 3 Continents Film Festival,
where the film also won the Special Prize of the Jury.
Minimal Stories
will next screen at Sundance 2003.
There might have been two triggering factors to this peculiar film: your
own incentive to make something different from your previous films, which were
quite theatrical, and David Lynch's film, The Straight Story...
Yes. I wanted to make a film without over the top characters. I had seen two
films that concurred with the kind of film that I wanted to make: the David
Lynch movie and Where is the Friend's Home? by Abbas Kiarostami, which
was a kind of Indiana Jones on a child's scale! (Smiles) So I realized
that the question of whether a story is "small" or "big"
is first and foremost a matter of point of view. So all this gave me the incentive
to make Minimal Stories.
A place that re-appears in your films is Patagonia...
Yes. I feel comfortable in Patagonia. I try to go there whenever I can. I feel
physically well there. Also, it's a place that fuels my incentive to make movies,
though it's not easy to film there, given the difficult weather conditions.
But even though I find the landscapes fascinating, I tried not to use them as
"decorations" for this story. The landscapes are always there, in
the background, but their presence is not as strongly felt as in my previous
film A King and His Movie. It's more like an empty space behind the characters.
I found it interesting to have such landscapes with characters that are themselves
solitary and secluded, looking for something. They're like castaways lost in
the emptiness of Patagonia, who meet each other once in a while. So to me, Patagonia
is a very stimulating place. Also, with globalization advancing, I feel that
films set in urban environments have increasingly identical looks. But Patagonia
really gives the film a different character.
What kind of communities does one find in Patagonia?
Patagonia has been a home to English, German and Welsh communities since the
nineteenth century. For some reason, tourists who go there are often either
German or French. They're truly fascinated by Patagonia. Understandably, it's
still a mysterious, virgin land, where one feels like an explorer.
You developed the script and found some of the actors for Minimal Stories
during a trip to Patagonia...
I went there for one month with my co-writer, so he could see the landscapes,
the people, feel the atmosphere... We developed the script fairly quickly, between
October 2001 and January 2002. We then cast the actors, changed the script a
little bit and started shooting in April 2002.
For the cast, I wanted mostly non-professional actors, simple people whose
personalities could easily fit in with the characters. The idea was to gather
a small group of people, adapt the script and the characters to their personalities,
and then try to remove their inhibitions in front of the camera and the crew
for the shooting.
Who, in the film, is actually from Patagonia?
There's the nurse, her assistant, the second baker and his assistant, the policeman,
the old woman who alters the cakes, plus people who appear in the TV quiz scene.
Who plays the part of Don Justo?
He's an old mechanic from Montevideo, Uruguay. In the beginning, I thought
that this role required a real actor. But he really convinced me when I saw
him move his ears! (Laughs) If you knew him, you would really feel like you
were talking to the character himself.
The second old man in the film, the salesman in the eatery scene, is actually
played by your "mascot actor", Cesar Garcia...
Yes. Cesar Garcia works in a restaurant in Buenos Aires, where I met him. He
appears in all my films. To me, he is fascinating, but he can't act like a professional
actor and learn lines. So for the eatery scene, I worked out a scheme with Javier
Lombardo whereby what he would say would call for reactions from Cesar. So we
filmed the scene with two cameras and his reactions were quite natural. Actually,
this scene was not in the script. We made it up on the spot. There were no lines
for this scene.
The scene with the second baker was actually done along the same lines...
Yes, for the scene where the baker has to change the letters on the cake, we
didn't tell him what he would have to do! He discovered that he had to change
the letters on the cake while we were shooting! His face reveals a real surprise!
(Smiles) But that was basically the challenge of this shooting: create a fictional
story with faked true-life moments.
Is the baker a real wrestler?
No, he isn't. We thought this up on the spot. We thought that this would build
up the tension a little bit in the scene. So we took photos of him as a wrestler
and, the following day, hung them on the walls of the bakery! (Laughs) The film
is full of things that were made up likewise, on the spur of the moment. We
actually made the film in chronological order so we could be open to anything
unexpected and use it to further develop the story and the characters. We also
began editing the film during the shooting.
The car scenes must have been shot with small cameras...
Yes, I myself operated the camera, which was a small Aaton. The sound engineer
was in the trunk of the car! (Laughs) To me, it's important to make films with
a semi-documentary feel, and with the least amount of equipment as possible.
How did Minimal Stories fare at the box office?
It opened in Buenos Aires in October 2002 and attracted quite a big audience.
It also opened in Spain in November. The rights have been sold to Italy, France,
Germany, Great Britain, Holland. For a small film, it's been quite successful.
How was it to get an award from Wim Wenders's own hands at the 2002 San
Sebastian Film Festival?
It was wonderful, because Wim Wenders is one of my favorite directors. The
Special Prize of the Jury is a prize that the Jury has to justify. Wim Wenders
told me that the film had captivated all the jury members, so they really thought
that the film deserved this prize.
Robin Gatto & Yannis Polinacci
Minimal Stories
