To celebrate the long-anticipated arrival of Cannes favourite Aquarius at HOME, Stephanie Dennison, Chair of Brazilian Studies at the University of Leeds speaks to director Kleber Mendonça Filho…
Stephanie Dennison: Since Aquarius premiered to great acclaim last May at Cannes, much has changed in the world’s landscape. Do you find yourself giving new interpretation to what is a contextually very rich film like Aquarius as it screens in different countries and shifting contexts?
KMF: I really believe that when you write something, a text, a film, a book, theatre, if you do it honestly you will pick up on things and the way it’s perceived and received will inevitably mirror some of the developments in society. It’s been a wonderful and crazy ride over the last 10 months. When we premiered the film at Cannes it was a very dramatic moment in Brazilian political history and it seems that things have got worse over the last 10 months. It’s a time of cynicism and a time of resistance in a way, and those themes were always a part of the script that I wrote for Aquarius and are still part of what the film turned out to be. Not only in the final cut but also in the way it’s been discussed and received. I actually think it’s a beautiful thing when cultural products or works of art interact organically with what’s happening in society. The film was released in Brazil last September. The country was divided at the time. Some people dismissed the film and even tried to boycott it but so many other people wanted to see it, to embrace it. It seemed to give people a cathartic release of energy. If you look at art or cinema or entertainment it’s always very interesting when you realise that a film seems to capture a certain mood, the whole thing with the zeitgeist. The film expresses a lot of concerns and fears and feelings that so many people have towards power, corruption, individuality. The character (Clara) finds a way to say no to people, of basically following her instincts and being brave.
The other thing that strikes me is that the film was shot on Pina Beach here in Recife. It’s a very local and very Brazilian film, yet it found so many people, from Sydney, Los Angeles, California and now England, Spain, Portugal, who have so many stories that seem to fit the film’s mood in some way. Like the film’s concerns about ethics, about preservation and about how pushy the markets can be. So many people identify with the character Clara in the film. It’s a universal story. It involves private space and the dividing lines which define space, how money is involved and how greedy people can be. It’s a discussion of the past, memories, preservation and demolition. All these elements seem to hit a nerve which is universal. I just tried to make an honest, truthful and heartfelt cinematic narrative. I’m happy and quite astonished that it has found so many people everywhere, and not at a superficial level.
SD: Sonia Braga’s performance in Aquarius is breathtaking. How was the experience of working with such an iconic film actress?
KMF: It was actually quite easy. Once Sonia read the script, she reacted very quickly – she got back to us in less than 48 hours – and once we sat down to Skype and she described her experience of reading the script, I could see that she completely got it. She seemed to be speaking about a film she saw the night before in minute details and that really broke the ice. I could tell that she could make the film, in political, sexual, aesthetic, social and in human terms and that meant we could skip many stages to the point where basically we just needed to get together and do the film. When she came to Recife we rehearsed for three weeks and we started shooting in August 2015. It was just a great experience. It’s like I had written the role for Sonia except that’s not true. Actually when I wrote the script I thought of finding some unknown woman and in my mind she didn’t even need to have acting experience. I thought I’d find the perfect woman and develop the script with her but that turned out to be a very silly idea. Once I realised I would need a professional actress, Sonia was number one on the list. But it was basically pure luck that we found each other and that the film happened the way it happened. Today Sonia is a good friend of mine and I have a lot of respect for her, not only as an actress but as a woman, as a person. She’s wonderful.
SD: Last year, as a result of your well-documented Cannes red carpet protest against the ousting of President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, you were accused of bringing the nation into disrepute. What is your take on such a criticism? Do you regard yourself as “controversial”, as the press would have it?
KMF: No I don’t, because I’m only a Brazilian citizen like millions of others, who has an opinion on what is happening in my country. Because I’m a filmmaker and I have access to the press, sometimes people just ask me and I tell them because I believe that we live in a democracy and it’s what you do – you can express your opinions freely. Also because I’m a filmmaker I had the opportunity of taking the film I made with the people I worked with to the Cannes Film Festival last year at a very dramatic time in Brazilian politics. A very questionable impeachment process had just started a few weeks earlier and since we were at Cannes and going up the steps at the Palais des Festivals we thought it would be right to express ourselves as Brazilian citizens and say this is wrong, this is a coup d’état. We never really thought twice about it and I’d do it again if I could go back in time. The Brazilian media, it doesn’t really question, it doesn’t really go to the heart of things. The Brazilian media is owned by roughly six families. They are all conservative and interested in nurturing some idea of power. This makes them very sensitive on the subject of criticism. There is something in Brazilian society that makes those who are critical feel like they are aliens. It’s quite rare to see people expressing an opinion and exercising the democratic right to say what they think. So given the dramatic moment we are living in, every time someone with a degree of exposure says a few things it becomes controversial. I certainly do not see myself as a controversial character except that I make very honest films and they seem to annoy or irritate some people, usually from the Right. I find it bizarre that a democratic protest like we staged in Cannes would get so much coverage, in terms of these nasty little attacks that come up on social media and titbits coming out in the press, and even retaliation from a completely ridiculous, nonsensical, self-imposed government like the one we have today, the government of Michel Temer. It’s a very strange time where a filmmaker like myself would be seen as some kind of radical. I’ve been called a communist. I’ve never been a communist, not even when I was a teenager. I think everything gets mixed up in a kind of storm of passion, hypocrisy and difficulty in understanding how democracy works. One of the things in democracy is freedom to express yourself. There is nothing extreme in saying that what’s happening right now is just absurd and completely unacceptable in terms of how a democratic society should be run and how it should work.
SD: Tell us about the time you spent as a teenager in England. Was this period of your life important for shaping your relation to memory, identity, popular culture?
KMF: My mother got her PhD from Essex university and we lived in Colchester from 1982 to 1986. It was a particularly happy time in our lives. I was a teenager: I arrived in England when I was 14 and left when I was 18. And it was way before the internet so I had a lot more access to films, to books. We used to go to London to the cinema every month. I really enjoyed the exposure that British television gave me to world cinema, not only commercial cinema but BBC2 and Channel 4 were quite wonderful with their screening of British cinema, Australian cinema, French, German. It was quite a schooling in film, in fact. They were great years that changed my life forever. I was just back in London a few days ago and it’s a city that I love. Every time I go to England everything comes back. Those years were so important to my family and to myself. I already loved film even before I lived in England, but England just made this passion for film bigger and stronger. After we came back and I went to university in Brazil and started making videos and my early films, I developed ties with France, with Holland. But I always think of England as something close, as home, because of the time I spent there in the 80s. I have the best memories really. British cinema, British television, a certain way of thinking, maybe the humour, and I was very happy that I got to spend four days promoting Aquarius in England and talking to so many great people.
See Aquarius on our screens from Fri 24 March. Book tickets and watch the trailer here.
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