One of the founders of the newest Catalan cinema, Mar Coll, throughout a 20-year career, has constantly questioned established thinking, be it the hypocrisy and emotional paralysis of the Catalan upper middle class (“Three Days with the Family”), the comic patriarchy of paternal narcissism (“Matar al Padre”) and the prevalence of Scandinavian social models (“No es Suecia”).
In “Salve Maria,” which makes its world premiere in the world’s most popular competition in Locarno, Coll questions a taboo subject, even for many in 2024: whether all girls are cut out for motherhood. Having largely directed her previous work in a naturalistic mode, “Salve Maria” marks a career departure, casting the film as a genre-bending psychological thriller.
Maria, a budding novelist and new mother, is increasingly haunted by the specter of a monster: herself. She appears in a newspaper article that involves her obsessing over a French woman in Barcelona who drowned her 10-month-old twins in the bathtub. “From that moment on, the specter of infanticide hangs over Maria’s life like a terrifying chance,” the synopsis reads.
The choice to make a psychological thriller unfolds throughout the film: in its retro feel, 35mm format and a pulsating, omnipresent orchestral soundtrack composed by Zeltia Montes, winner of the Goya Award for best original film from the Spanish Academy for “The Good Boss”, starring Javier Bardem; the growing air of delirium when Maria stops hiding her neurosis, heading to the Pyrenees in search of Alice; scenes of pure fantasy.
Brought to you by Be For Movie, “Salve Maria” is produced by María Zamora at Elástica Movies, Spain’s most vibrant production company for arthouse and crossover films, and by Escándalo Movies, founded by Sergi Casamitjana to source works by alumni of Barcelona’s Escac film school, whose most famous alumni may be J.A.Bayona and Coll herself.
Elástica Movies also handles home distribution in Spain.
Selection spoke to Coll on the eve of this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
Some of the issues remain the same in “Salve Maria.” Ever since your first feature, 2009’s “Three Days With the Household,” you’ve questioned the established middle-class mindset, its precepts. Here, you up the ante, suggesting that not all mothers are cut out for motherhood.
Sea Coll: Absolutely. My co-writer, Valentina Viso, and I always try to work from a place that is intellectually stimulating, somewhat disconcerting, and questions assumptions. There is always a vital thought component to our films.
But in other ways, “Salve Maria” is a starting point, where his main determination, after having directed dramatic comedies in a naturalistic way, is to create a psychological suspense thriller….
Of course, completely. One change is that it’s an adaptation of Katixa Agirre’s guide, “Moms Don’t,” which is a completely different style, as you say, from the more naturalistic way of filmmaking that we’ve been doing. However, we wanted to recast it as a thriller. We didn’t want the film to be too mental. We wanted it to be more atmospheric. Looking back, I think it was a good idea to tell the story the way we did: this sense of anguish, guilt and monstrosity: a film more about experience, about bodily sensation.
Monstrosity can also be a social idea. A key scene has Mary visiting a Gothic church within the Pyrenean village of Taüll…
The film talks about the taboo and guilt associated with the feeling that what is happening to you negates you not only as a mother, but as an individual. It is assumed that a mother, simply by giving birth, is likely to be able to love and cherish a child.
In the bestiary, the animals representing sins were associated with animals that existed. But since the painters had not seen these animals, they represented them as monsters. Since dysfunctional motherhoods are also quite unknown, they are also considered monstrous. Infanticide is committed by an individual who is the “other”, the monster, who is not like us. As writers and creators, we try to understand, empathize and get close to the particular person. It is essential that the painters, since they did not know these animals, represented them as monsters.
Women who are not made for motherhood continue to be one of the great taboos of the 21st century.
But it’s certainly not that different. I think motherhood always brings up extremely ambivalent feelings. The case we’re dealing with is probably one of the strongest, but they exist and they’re bigger than you can imagine. But they’re not in our ethical compass. So it’s very difficult to talk about them. It’s very dark that this is happening to you, because it makes you a failure, a monster, a dirty person. So it’s difficult to talk about it – because of the guilt, the shame, the stigma and the ostracism, and it’s very difficult for others to detect what’s happening. People ask why Maria’s husband doesn’t realize what’s happening, but he doesn’t realize it because he just can’t think that this kind of thing could happen to Maria.
Another change is the soundtrack…
Of course, it was entirely composed for the film by Zeltia Montes. We went to the archive in Budapest. This film has been a learning curve for me, as it allowed me to play with language. When you are making an actor’s cinema, you are seeking emotion through different channels. The producer, María Zamora, inspired me: “Of course, of course, of course: there will probably be music regularly in this film.”
The use of style in social-level films is a growing trend among young directors.
It’s generational. We wanted to make a film that was extra-cinematic, possibly to tackle something different from TV, and a film that had a love for language, the assets created by the narrative, and 35mm, the expressive photographs and a rating used like in traditional films. That said, the film mixes tones to maintain its rhythm, its dramatic tension.
Like the first scenes of María taking part in maternity classes, which have an almost documentary feel…
We use real mothers and several babies, seeking a form of realism. I would say that we are making a psychological thriller, but of the European type, with components for reflection: a disturbing film with characters of a certain ethical ambiguity, where the thriller ingredient is constructed.