Sunday, 17 March 2019
4 p.m. at The Earl Cameron Theatre, City Hall
Dir.: Roberto Gutierrez
Country: USA
Runtime: 14:50
Lucy is directed by Roberto Gutierrez and follows a foley artist called Raoul (Luigi Sciamanna) who spies on a woman called Lucy (Eloisa Maturén) and her husband (Elvis Chaveinte) who live in an apartment block across the way. Being a foley artist (a person who creates sound effects for films), Raoul begins to construct the audible world of Lucy by his own means. He pours water through a colander to simulate the sound of rain, crumples plastic for bodies on fabric, and smashes light bulbs for picture frames: all of this as he watches her life unfolding on a TV.
Some things that come to mind: Obsession. Voyeur. Rear Window. The Lives of Others.*
‘He’s one of the best actors in Venezuela,’ Roberto says of Luigi Sciamanna, “we knew someone that knew him and we delivered the script. He read it, and he called me and said: ‘Okay. I’m gonna work on this. But I have one condition: I will not be directed by anyone. I will do whatever I want with the character. If you are okay with this…we can move on.’” Roberto was ready to move on. I’m ready. Let’s go. “‘One other thing,’” Sciamana continued, “‘I want a giraffe present at all times.’” I made that last bit up, actually. It was an owl. No. But seriously: Lucy is a film where film theory occupies itself. Therefore, it is not best described in a piece of writing; rather, sitting down and watching it will best ‘describe’ Lucy to the reader, or viewer. But, damn it; I have to write about something.
Director Roberto Gutierrez is 100% filmmaker. Edited in the USA by offered hands, Lucy may be the first fictional film in a career centered on advertising, but the muscle was already there. Developed. Waiting to be uncovered.
Venezuelan by nature and Mexican by residence, Roberto moved to Mexico a year ago after the socio-economic culmination of the 2017 Venezuelan Constitutional Crisis, which proved to be – very bad. ‘There was a struggle to get rid of the dictator,’ Roberto referring here to Nicolás Maduro, ‘the streets of the capitol (Caracas) were barricaded. The city was collapsed. You couldn’t go anywhere in a car.’
The Bolivarian National Militia took up anti-protest duties as early as February 2017 (though this, technically, happened before the constitutional crisis).
In March 2017 The Supreme Tribunal of Justice (mainly Maduro supporters) acquired legislative powers from the National Assembly. This didn’t go down well with Venezuelans. Not well at all. Protests increased. Eventually, Maduro called an election to shut everyone up (or so he thought).
‘He did some elections that were rigged,’ Roberto says, ‘he proclaimed himself the new President of Venezuela.’ That was in January 2019. But then National Assembly President Juan Guaidó argued that the election had indeed been fixed. ‘So by constitution,’ Gutierrez explains, ‘and by law, it should be the president of the National Assembly who should be president of Venezuela.’ Roberto’s fed up with this. You can tell. ‘It’s a diplomatic struggle,’ he finishes, ‘and it’s very complicated.’
It is impossible to talk about Lucy (as director Roberto Gutierrez demonstrated) without explaining the political broiler in which it was created.
He and Héctor Torres wrote the script 5 years ago. ‘We were trying to get money from the government at first,’ akin to the Soviet Film Board in the U.S.S.R., ‘but because inflation was so ridiculously high,’ an unholy 4,000% in 2017, ‘our budget was like 25 dollars.’
Roberto ended up financing the film privately through contributions from his production company’s clients, and out of his own pocket.
‘They always set you up to fail,’ Roberto says of the government's involvement in Venezuelan filmmaking (even though the National Film Board of Venezuela [CNAC] try their best under the circumstances). 'You don’t have the cameras. Don’t have the gear, or the lighting. It’s very difficult to get approval from the government to shoot. So doing a film without them was kind of a protest in itself.’
With private investment (both spiritual and financial), Roberto’s cast and crew filmed in a Caracas apartment block for 2 days (filming overall lasted 5). Below them, the riots continued, and they were less peaceful than others encountered.
Roberto relayed to me the difficulties of his situation. Imagine this: It’s 15 May 2017. It’s hot. Really hot. Gutierrez and his crew are filming a scene in Lucy’s apartment with Eloisa and Elvis. Roberto’s already had to deal with a light not working. This delays everything. It’s still hot. Time is precious. He knows this. ‘Encenderlo de nuevo.’ (‘Turn it on again.’) The light comes back on, but now the camera’s malfunctioning. ‘Jesús,’ Roberto mumbles, ‘qué le pasó a la cámara?’ (‘What happened to the camera?’)
‘No lo sé,’ the cinematographer replies, ‘tenemos que restablecer.’ (‘We have to reset.’)
‘Está bien,’ Roberto says, rubbing his temples. ‘Cambier la batería.’ (Change the battery.’)
Everything is reset but Roberto’s sweating now because (ignoring the protestors fighting anti-protest militia 50 feet below) he’s running out of time. He shouts, ‘Acción!’ and they start filming Elvis and Eloisa. The actors play out the scene for a few seconds until the guy holding the boom mic looks at his colleagues. ‘Sshhhhhhh!’ he screams in whispered tones, ‘Oye! Parar! Oigo Algo!’ (‘Hey! Stop! I hear something!’)
The production halts. Actors freeze. Roberto stares at the boom guy, who in turn is staring out the window. Shots are fired. Sweat drips. They hear a scream. The boom guy directs his eyes to Roberto and confirms, ‘Está bien, vamonos.’ (Okay, let’s move on.’) The cast and crew adopt a sense of duty. They continue.
Now living in Mexico, Roberto sighs. ‘We were heartbroken during the filming,’ he says. ‘Lucy has nothing to do with Venezuela. But it’s something that is imprinted on the film because we did it (the film) with so much passion.’ They bypassed the riots. They bypassed the conflict. And they bypassed the government. As Roberto puts it, it was very much a case of: “‘IN YOUR FACE!’”
But Lucy was also an exercise in narrative filmmaking. And during any exercise of this kind, there is a moment when the director has to change their vision of the film to match the reality of the production. Actors. Location. Politics. It all adds up to a pile of adjustments in the end. To do this, however, you have to let go. Seriously. Let go of whatever image you had when you were writing it. It subsequently becomes a collective image: a film wherein every creative decision is a discussion between director, cast and crew. ‘With this project, I think,’ Roberto says of his collective image, ‘this letting go – I think it’s a very good thing for the film because it grows. Especially if you have people you trust on your side.’ He bobs his head. Accomplished.
* By Alfred Hitchcock (1954) and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (2006), respectively.
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