Paula Ortiz is a Spanish Director, Screenwriter and Producer who works for Get in the Pictures Productions and Amapola Films, teaches Audiovisual Communication at the University of Barcelona, and collaborates with the University of San Jorge in Zaragoza. In 2011, Ortiz was nominated for a Goya Award in the Best New Director category for her film “Chrysalis,” and later that year won the Pilar Miró Prize for Best New Director at the Valladolid International Film Festival. Her other notable works are the critically acclaimed “The Bride” (2014) as well as “Across the River and Into the Trees” (2022) and “Teresa” (2023).
At this year’s San Sebastián International Film Festival, Tara Karajica sat down with Paula Ortiz to discuss her latest film, “The Red Virgin,” that screened out of Competition at the festival. Written by Eduard Sola and Clara Roquet and starring Najwa Nimri and Alba Planas, “The Red Virgin” is the story of Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira. Hildegart is conceived and educated by her mother Aurora to be the woman of the future, becoming one of the most brilliant minds in Spain in the 1930s and one of Europe’s leading referents on female sexuality. But, on a summer night in 1933, Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira shoots to death Hildegart, thus putting an end to the “Hildegart Project.”
At the press conference, you talked about how you came on board the film and how you knew about Hildegart beforehand. Can you delve more into that?
Paula Ortiz: Yes, the truth is that I knew about Hildegart’s story when I was in college. There was a teacher that told us about this story and about female artists, thinkers, writers and politicians that we don’t really know about because after the dictatorship, all these names were erased. So, I knew them, the story, the context, but mainly its brutal contradiction. I became a little obsessed with this story and I started reading about them. I read her books. I read the trial declarations from the mother. And, it’s true that I’ve been working on this story, or the story has been with me for many, many years.
The two characters are essentially so different. Can you talk about them?
P.O.: These two characters are the opposite, but at the same time, it’s like just one creature with two heads because Najwa [Nimri] said that, and it’s true because this is the story of how a mother educated her daughter as a project, as a creature that she owns, with really amazing knowledge, but at the same time, in the name of freedom, and in the name of female freedom and female revolution. But, at the end, for the first time, the young girl – because she’s a teenager and she’s discovering the world – makes her first gestures of freedom, so the mother kills her. So, it’s a very brutal fight between mother and daughter, and a brutal fight between big contradictions. They are the same, but they are the opposite because Aurora, at the end of the day, is very strict. She says that she is doing everything in the name of freedom, but it’s not true. She is really strict and there is a huge repression in her. She is the daughter of big structures, older structures, male structures, and then suddenly her daughter is breaking everything. And, it’s beautiful to me. It’s a fascinating, beautiful and also terrible way of seeing how structures and how a mother and a daughter can destroy themselves.
What you say about your references for the film mirrors the quote in the film “Freud in the sex, Marx in the head and Nietszche in the heart,” which for you would be “Coppola, Coppola and Spielberg.” I see a lot of Spielberg.
P.O.: It was our main reference. I work with my cameraman who is also my partner and our main reference for this film was Munich.
I saw Spielberg. It’s really there more than the other two.
P.O.: It’s so interesting because it’s true that it’s the main reference for this film and my challenge was Spielberg because it was not the language in my previous movies, which were more European, more contemplative. I mean, it’s worlds away from [this one]. It was a challenge to try and be a narrator in that way.
Is it still the same order? “Coppola, Coppola and Scorsese”? I think it’s “Spielberg, Spielberg and Spielberg.”
P.O.: Also, Scorsese, for some specific shot or sequence. For example, Scorsese was in my mind in the bar that night when they go in and people are dancing Jazz, and also with the shots. It was also a Scorsese reference when the mother is going to shoot her. Also, Jane Campion, in a way – that kind of cold repression that she managed in The Piano is there, in a way.
You also said that Cinema can’t be entirely historical. Can you elaborate on that?
P.O.: I studied Art History, but my PhD was about Screenwriting. So, what I mean with that, is not that it can’t be historical. There is a paradox because any film is always historical, always political because it’s like a machine from its time, and you cannot be out of your time. So, on the one hand, you have that, but on the other hand, the thing is that even in very realistic and naturalistic movies, you cannot portray everything. You cannot portray the whole complexity of History. So, you are choosing, and our narrative choices, and all of our aesthetical, conceptual, narrative, dramatic choices are an aesthetical gesture. It’s an artificial construction in a way. So, it’s not completely historical. It’s a choice. But also, for people who write History, for History teachers, they know that you have to choose what you teach. So, History is like that. But it’s true that they have that paradox because, at the same time, the camera is always historical. You put the camera and you are filming what you have in front of you and so, it’s what it is at that particular time.
Did you have a historical consultant on the film?
P.O.: We had several because I’ve been working at the University of Barcelona for eleven years as a professor, really. In fact, I made movies during the summers. So, the first consultant was the first teacher that told me this story, who is one of the experts, actually, on Contemporary History at the University of Zaragoza. Then, [the other experts are] people from Gender Studies. And, myself. Many, many teachers and colleagues have been helping me for years to learn and read about this story.
Another thing that you mentioned is that it’s not possible not to look at this film from the point of view of motherhood, because if you did, if you come to it from another angle, it would be a different story and a different film. Can you expand on that?
P.O.: I don’t know how different it would be. It would probably be the same film, but the cracks wouldn’t be the same. Because now, as a mother, I understand some small, but very profound details about motherhood and about how complex the relationship with your children is because this is what you love the most. But you have to understand that they’re not yours. And, of course, it’s something that I knew, but when you live it, it’s something that I think is a contradiction, and it’s an experience that any mother or father has. And, it was great to have this story, this real mirror.
The look of the film is extremely cold, and I think it’s a mirror of Aurora’s head. I also like the tiny contrast with the outside world with the red dress. It’s an amazing touch. Can you talk about the esthetic of the film?
P.O.: Yes. To me, colors are very significant because they have a very sensual, powerful and symbolic meaning on screen. So, in this story, it’s true that we divided the film esthetically: the film in the world, in that house, between mother and daughter, where that house is very cold, as you said, and it’s getting colder and darker when the story is becoming also darker. And, the idea was not only to have cold colors; it’s only half of it. A very, very cold, clean and clinical environment. A very organized environment, like Aurora said. Very rigid also. And, we said that we did that in the Nietzschian way, meaning that he divided the world according to the Apollonian impulse – very orderly, harmonic, but clean. And then, there is the Dionysian impulse, and the world is like Dionysus; it’s not perfect, it’s dirty, it’s warm, it’s full of other textures, in browns, in warm colors, with imperfections, but very much alive. That’s the world. And, that contrast was one of the main proposals for this study. And also, of course, the color black. They always wore black. That was true, by the way. They always wore black. And, it was something weird for a teenager. I can imagine that it was weird for a teenager to be wearing black, always, every day. So, black for them was a statement, a political statement and a statement from the feminist thought – that only my head, my mind is what matters, not my body, not what I’m wearing. It was a beautiful idea that was real. It wasn’t an aesthetical or cinematic idea. It seems as though it was a cinematic choice, but it wasn’t. It was historical. And, the red touch, yes, it was kind of an iconic moment of freedom for political meanings like life, love…
Can you talk about the feminism in the film?
P.O.: Them being feminists was very progressive for the time. And so, it’s now sort of a trend to see that and I love that we see feminism and pleasure and feminine things from a female point of view. This is, to me, from the feminine, the female and feminist perspective is very interesting, because they were amazing. They were so progressive. They were bold for that moment. If you read in the books today, they are still revolutionary because she wrote about what matters and about main questions of feminism that we haven’t solved yet. So, it’s amazing what she was doing and what she was thinking and what she was throwing into the political debate. So, to me, it’s an amazing feminist from a hundred years ago in Spain, before the dictatorship. It’s amazing to be aware of how progressive we were and what would have happened if the Civil War and the dictatorship hadn’t stopped it. At the same time, from a feminist point of view, it’s a very controversial story because this mother, she’s a very strong feminist, a very lucid feminist. She’s fascinating. And, in the name of feminism, she killed [her daughter]. So, that contradiction is so huge from a dramatic perspective, that, to me, was very, very interesting, because, I think, from a female perspective and a cinematic perspective, we also need to tell and read and retain. We need to talk about our dark side.
What is your opinion of women in film in Spain?
P.O.: I think women in film in Spain now are great. There is a huge and very plural generation of female directors that are amazing, and they are making amazing films, very different films. And, it is because, of course, there is a new generation. It’s in the sensibility of times, but also because in the last few years, the Ministry of Culture and other institutions have been supporting women in film. So, I think we can notice now that support and we are in a good place.
What are you working on next?
P.O.: I’ve done three films in the last two years. So now, I’m just writing. I started writing two very different scripts. A small one and a big one. And let’s see which one [gets made].
Photo credits: The San Sebastián International Film Festival.
This interview was conducted at the 2024 San Sebastián International Film Festival.
