By Mariana Llamas-Cendon / Amigos805.com
“The Milk of Sorrow” (La teta asustada) was Peru’s first-ever Oscar winner in 2010 under the Best Foreign Film category. Now “Contracorriente” (Undertow) could be following in the steps of “…Sorrow” in the run towards the Academy Awards. Nominees will be announced on Jan. 25.
“It has been pre-selected to the Oscars and Spain’s Goya awards,” said Fuentes-Leon, director and screenwriter of “Contracorriente,” during an telephone interview with Amigos805.com. “I am happy.”
In early 2002, Fuentes-Leon finished the screenplay’s first draft, but it took six years to start filming it, although it premiered in 2009 at Spain’s San Sebastian International Film Festival.
“Step by step I realized that my dreams were coming true. First, I finished the screenplay and then I got the authorization so the next step was to get the cast and technical staff,” Fuentes-Leon said.
The story was created during a screenplay writing class at Calarts, where Fuentes-Leon studied film.
“We were asked to create a scene following some guidelines such as: three characters at the most, one single location, and plenty of conflict. I ended up writing a specific scene that got stuck in my head,” he said. “That scene, including some changes, remains within the movie. It is actually the one that opens the door to the fantastic aspect of the film.”
Miguel, the main character, has two parallel love stories: a forbidden love involving a same-sex painter and the love story he shares along with his wife.
“It isn’t that he doesn’t love his wife anymore because he absolutely does. In fact, these are two intense love stories thus the main dilemma is such a big deal,” he said.
Fuentes-Leon feels a deep connection with his main character, Miguel, but he emphasizes that Miguel story isn’t autobiographical and it goes to extremes because it is a drama.
“For starters I am gay. I am not married, I have never been close to becoming a father. I didn’t loose my beloved,” Fuentes-Leon said. “It isn’t my story, but I share the fear of being discovered, the process of personal discovery, of personal reaffirmation, and of acceptance and to be open about it.”
Miguel has to face a variety of obstacles since he lives in a tiny and far-off, extremely religious Peruvian coastal town.
“I am from Lima, from an educated and world-traveled family, so it isn’t my situation, but I am fond of Miguel’s character and of every single character because each one has come from me, but particularly with Miguel there is a plain identification,” Fuentes-Leon said.
Despite the film action happening in a far-off rural town, Fuentes-Leon considers it as a fable, “some kind of metaphor about not only what occurs in Peru’s rural areas but also within big city limits where the same rejection to homosexuality and the same conservatism or religious fervor prevails within aristocracy, whether Peruvian or Mexican, where surnames and social leverage is paramount; therefore having a gay son could be even a worse curse in a upper class Colombian family than within a fishermen family of the northern coast of Mexico.”
Fuentes-Leon is very clear about what he defines to be “a man”.
“I believe manliness isn’t found in how masculine, strong, womanizing, macho one is or on how many beers one can drink or how much one likes football, It is actually found in our dignity, our own role and on how authentic one is with oneself and on how brave one is to say this is who I am whether one fits perfectly within society or not,” he said. “A man is more of a man when he is able to show his feelings and when he acts with dignity, honor, respect, honesty, integrity and authenticity.”
Love is the story’s lait motif, but it is shown from a different perspective of what we are use to seeing.
“Love itself is what matters, not necessarily the existent sexual relation between two people,” he said.
Actually Fuentes-Leon’s main objective was “showing the audience in general that a love story between two same-sex people could be as emotional, complex, intense and honest as happens in a relationship between a woman and a man.”
It was also paramount to him that the audience can be touched with such a love story.
“Our audience has been touched by the story so much so that we have already been awarded 39 prizes from which 21 were chosen by the people,” Fuentes-Leon said.
“Audiences everywhere, and from all walks of life, were touched People from Cartagena, Montreal, Miami, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Lima,” Fuentes-Leon said. “We were just awarded the People’s Choice Award in Brazil and Puerto Rico. That’s the beauty of this experience.”
The participants
“Contracorriente” (Undertow) is a Peruvian film, but was funded by film companies in Germany, France, Colombia and the Peruvian government.
“I tried for a while to get support in the U.S., but even though there were so many people that reacted positively to the screenplay nothing ever happened,” Fuentes-Leon said. “My intention was to film in Spanish and in Peru, so to get the necessary support in the U.S. for a film that is intended to be filmed overseas it is really hard unless you are a well-known and well-established director.”
During the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany, a local company became interested in Fuentes-Leon’s project.
“They joined me for the ride and through them we got the first funds; later a French company that learned about the project through the Berlin Film Festival also applied for a French film fund and that’s how we got the foundation money that helped us to bring onboard Dynamo Capital, a Colombian company, which has a private fund,” he said.
After the Peruvian government decided to pitch in, “the Latin American companies took on the lead,” Fuentes-Leon said.
Stayed tuned to the announcement of the Academy Award nominees because “Contracorriente” could be the next Peruvian contender to the Oscars competing against the latest Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s film “Biutiful” starring Oscar-winning actor Javier Bardem.