Angles: Women Working in Film and Video (1994)

Latin American Filmmakers | Don’t Want to Talk About It/De eso no se habla Maria Luisa Bemberg In praise of transgressors a Y . + wee OK M. A 8 BE [ n Argentine director Maria Luisa Bemberg’s Camila (1984), a young woman from an upper class family commits a forbidden act when she falls in love and elopes with a parish priest. Subsequently, the two are hunted down and executed. In one scene of this melodrama, set in the 19th century, the woman’s mother is the only one courageous enough to speak out against the injustice and cruelty of their fate. With this scene, Bemberg alludes to the brave Argentine mothers who were the first to speak out against a military regime that had murdered or tortured their sons and daughters. Camila is an example of how Bemberg, an internationally renowned director, takes a specific story or circumstance and relates it to a broader social concern. Personal and social repression, transgression and liberty are recurring themes that run through her work. Her recent film, 1 Don’t Want to Talk About It/De eso no se habla, like earlier works, centers on an intelligent, rebellious woman who breaks away from a repressive environment. Based on a short story by Julio Llinas, it’s the first film she’s directed using another writer’s material. Charlotte, played by AIejandra Podesta, is an engaging young woman with a distinctive physical characteristic that her domineering mother doesn’t want anyone to mention (Bemberg asked that we not give it away here). In fact, she terrorizes the whole town into silence. Marcello Mastroianni is a worldly older man who falls in love with the charming Charlotte and marries her. But Charlotte finds her protective environment in this little seaside town stifling and seeks her own destiny. Bemberg’s leading women — like Charlotte — are rebellious and courageous, ready to break the rules for personal freedom. There’s a bit of Bemberg in all her characters. Her own rebellion began when she started making films at age 58. She had divorced her husband after raising four children and pursued filmmaking as a way to express her concerns. Using her own money to launch what has become an illustrious directing career, she wrote several screenplays before making Moments/Momentos (1981), about a woman’s adulterous affair. Camila, her most commercially successful film here and in Argentina, is based on a true story. Miss Mary (1986), with Julie Christie, reflects Bemberg’s upbringing in an upper-class family. This tableaux of life among the wealthy in the 1930s comments on 10 ® ANGLES a stagnant patriarchal society and the kind of blind arrogance that lead to Peronist politics. Probably her most ambitious work, I, the Worst of All/ Yo, la mas pobre de todas (1989), tells the story of the 17th-century Mexican nun and poet Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. It was included in a retrospective of Bemberg’s films | presented by The Film Center at the School of the Art Insti tute in Chicago. The screening of this film, which has no U.S. distributor and can only be seen at festivals and special events, was co-sponsored by Women in the Director’s Chair 13th International Film and Video Festival, with a focus on Latina film and video makers. I Don’t Want To Talk About It was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival of Festivals. The film is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics but a release date hasn’t been set. Bemberg spoke with me about her work while attending the Toronto festival and in a followup phone interview while she was in Chicago. Elfrieda Abbe: You asked that we not talk about the physical characteristics that make Charlotte, the central character in J Don’t Want To Talk About It, distinctive. Why not? Maria Luisa Bemberg: I notice that people who go to see the film not knowing anything about [Charlotte] enjoy it much more. I can tell you it’s a tale more than a story. It begins... Once upon a time in a far away Argentina, in the 30s, in an invented town by the water there lived a little girl... It happens before television, before psychoanalysis, before Perénism, and, of course before feminism. It’s my favorite film because it has many readings — it’s a love story, it has humor, it has poetry,