One, like journalistyou have to be very careful, prevention, rather, when approaching those characters those he admires. For two reasons. The first, the lack of objectivityalways lurking but in these cases obvious. And, second, that the reference falls from the pedestal to which, unconsciously and inevitably, you raised it when you fell in love with its creative charms. That’s what I was thinking about last week, on the way to a central Madrid bookstore.
He had met there with Isabel Coixet (Sant Adrià de Besòs, Barcelona, 1960), who was in Madrid to present I write you a letter in my head (Círculo de Tiza), anthology of the newspaper articles who has been writing weekly for years. Although as soon as I saw her, upon greeting each other, I knew that she had nothing to worry about. The dangers that worried me disappeared. Then, I realized that she was facing a honest and shy personwho takes refuge in the distance to hide the “social anxiety” he suffers from in the schoolyard.
The reality he inhabits, like his cinema, just like his life, takes place on the margins, through those twists and turns that allow the lateral thinking, far from the obvious and the commonplace. Lover of enjoyment, hedonistic, fun and suggestive, Coixet is a Compulsive reader, as well as a subtle writer and a great conversationalist. “I don’t know if we have gone through the hills of Úbeda,” she told me at the end of the talk. Quite the opposite. There are times when it is better to go off script.
Q. Is the Isabel Coixet who writes different from the one who looks through the camera?
A. I don’t think they are different. Of all the costumes I have, there is one combination that in the end is me. I have a degree in History, I have never studied cinema. So, although I don’t feel it concretely, I feel the gaze of someone who is trained as a historian. When I write, especially short texts, I suppose I go to some corners of my gaze, but I don’t know if it’s different.
Q. That corner you are referring to is lateral thinking.
A. Always.
Q. Does this lateral thinking prevent you from falling into clichés?
A. We all fall into commonplaces and sometimes, when time passes and I read a column, I think: My God, I who criticize the commonplace so much, there it was. But I think I have a radar to detect them. Lateral thinking teaches you to leave the beaten path. My texts are not a battery of commonplaces, I try to talk about films that no one talks about, books that have gone unnoticed, musicians who are not successful but seem great to me… The idea, especially lately , that’s it, because giving an opinion on reality completely surpasses me.
Q. Reality has caught up with us in recent years.
A. Absolutely.
Q. And that is a challenge for the creator.
R. Yes, of course, we feed on these paradoxes, on bigger than lifeWhat happens is that life is tough.
Q. We talk about giving our opinion, or not, about reality, and that leads me to commitment. She has always proven to be a committed creator. Is it a responsibility?
R. It’s simpler, it’s what comes to me.
Q. But you could try to avoid it.
A. Sometimes I try to avoid it, especially because I think that at the moment there is a concept that is very important, which is the courage of nuance. I have always acted on impulse, without any agenda, the same in the field of commitment. [hace el gesto de entrecomillar con las manos] or in the…
P. You put it in quotation marks, eh?
R. Yes, because it sounds very pompous, doesn’t it?
Q. Well, it sounds like whatever we want it to sound like. The word commitment is a nice one.
A. Yes, and I have committed myself to things I believe in. What I have a problem with is saying things but then doing nothing, and that is why I am sometimes ashamed to say something. It is all very well to say Palestine; yes, yes, but how? I am in action.
P. That’s the only way to change things, by acting.
A. I think I also do it because of some kind of unstoppable motor that I have inside my Duracell bunny. For me the next or almost parallel thing is what we can do or if there is something I can do. Only the well-being It also bothers me. That’s why sometimes, of course, since we live in these times of headlines and people who say about themselves “I’m a very good person.” [ríe], because I have a horrible qualm about saying certain things. Of course the Palestinian genocide seems bad to me, who doesn’t? But can something be done at an individual level, putting pressure on…?
Q. Living in an era of headlines, as you say, leads us to not scratch the surface, to not go any further.
A. The thing is that scratching also has its dangers, its consequences, when you scratch you see things that you don’t like.
Q. And they make you uncomfortable. Agnés Varda, one of your role models, used to say that if we want comfort, we should go to a sofa store.
R. Yes, yes [ríe].
Q. You mention that quote of hers in the book when referring to the second film she made with Jane Birkin.
R. Yes, it is a very committed film, and there are people who say that it should not be shown in certain places, and I think: but hiding things does not mean that they do not happen. Things happen and sometimes things are not pretty and people that we thought were sacred, well, they are a horror.
Q. The thing is that, rather than accumulating certainties, we are losing them.
A. Totally, absolutely. What happens is that, of course, you have to live with some certainty and when they start to falter, you think: this can’t be. That’s why, every time I read, right now, about people who are being cancelled, or whatever you want to call it, people I even knew, and I discover things they’ve done, I say: but, who’s going to be next? Can I really trust people for whom I would have put my hand in the fire? Well, no.
“Giving an opinion about reality is completely beyond me. Life is tough.”
Q. Do the certainties we have about cinema, especially literature, prepare us for life?
A. I think they prepare us a lot, at least they have prepared me a lot. They have prepared me for the art of losing, they have prepared me for many things and, above all, they have let me know, in a palpable way, that I am not alone, that all the nonsense, absurdities and fantasies that occur to me are not that It’s not a rare thing, but it’s common. People fantasize, people speculate, people suffer for little things and there is no ranking of suffering. That abysmal difference in nature, in character, in ways of reacting, has indeed prepared me, through cinema and literature, for life.
Q. And have they also helped you to accept things as they come?
R. No, for that I have to reach my mother’s Zen [cumplirá 91 años en agosto]who has a great way of not seeing what he doesn’t want to see.
Q. To be happy you have to have good health and a bad memory, right?
A. They are going to put it on the little label they put on the urn when I die, because it is real.
P. Among the most beautiful articles is the letter you write to your daughter, which gives the book its title.
A. Yes, I remember that I wrote it one day when she was at a point where she no longer believed in the human race. How do you tell someone that she will believe again, that this will pass and that, if I could put a diving suit on you so that nothing would happen to you, I would do it, but it is not possible? And when you believe that your role as a mother is no longer so relevant or fundamental, you realize that it is still so.
Q. Do you think that feeling heard, read, is the previous step to feeling understood?
R. [Largo suspiro] I feel quite understood, maybe not by many people, but there are people who understand me and share many things with me. You notice it, even in ways of being in the world, socially. I have always had social anxiety, since the schoolyard, so I see someone when that happens to them. The good thing about spending many years with that way of being in the world is that you also see that these social people, who I envied, who have many friends, who go on 14 vacations, which for me that would be hell, you realize realize that they don’t have it so good either. Then, you don’t feel so bad anymore.
Q. How do you cultivate and, above all, preserve your own judgment?
R. [Largo silencio] I have been reading the New Yorker since I was 15 years old, and it is one of the things that have been most fundamental in my life. Not only the texts of literature, cinema, music, all that part of life, which has taught me a little about what life was like for adults and above all in New York, the furthest thing from the life I could lead. … I must have something of an arrogant thing, maybe, but I think that my criterion is the one that counts [ríe].
Q. I don’t think that has anything to do with arrogance, but with the certainty of a job well done. But women have been questioned since the beginning of the world…
A. Well… Today, as I had to talk about women’s suffrage, I’ve been reviewing the sessions of the Cortes in which Clara Campoamor and Victoria Kent were discussing, from two completely different feminist perspectives, about suffrage. For days and days, all the caricatures of them, all the headlines, which are the same as those of now… Please, let us be mediocre.
“At this time, the courage of nuance is very important”
Q. Books are part of your creative universe. What role does literature play in your life?
A. It is a capital role. I have to travel with four books, because what happens if I don’t like one or if I lose them? I have to have spare parts.
Q. But in e-book or on paper?
A. No, no, paper. And on my nightstand there have to be many books for any circumstance, I’m talking about ten.
Q. And does it depend on your mood, the moment you are going through?
A. Yes, also about periods. Since I spend my summers in France, I delve into contemporary French literature and it’s true that they publish a lot of books. In fact, I’m going to do a series in France now and one of the main characters is a girl who is a compulsive reader. She works in a second-hand bookshop and someone always comes in asking her about the new releases until one day she gives a speech about why new releases shouldn’t take over the shelves of bookshops.
Q. And yet, they take over.
R. And yet, they fill them. And yet, that magic that that table has with those covers…
Q. But, be careful, not all authors age well.
A. No. I think the ones I really like have aged well, the ones I like a lot.
Q. Is it harder for a book to age well than a movie?
A. I think that a film has more chances of aging badly, because there is something palpable, physical about it. And yet, I have the feeling that my films, despite the fact that they contain totally anachronistic elements, I think they age well.
Q. And what book do you recommend that you have enjoyed recently?
R. Of those that have impressed me the most, which is now going to be published in Spanish, the author herself is translating it, is the one sad tiger [de Neige Sinno, Premio Fémina 2023].
Q. Annie Ernaux told me about him. She’s from incest, right?
A. Yes, it is a great book, it has touched me a lot. It is a very uncomfortable book, it talks, for example, about pleasure. She narrates how one of the many judges she has seen throughout the process asked her: “Well, but you felt pleasure.” And she says, “And that makes the crime less?” He spares nothing, he saves nothing. When you see that an author asks himself the questions that you think are relevant to tell what he wants to tell. I liked it a lot.
Q. And what questions do you ask yourself when you want to tell a story?
R. Don’t think I ask myself so many questions. I question myself on a personal level, but when I decide that I want to make a film, it’s like evidence, and when I feel it, I go for it.
Q. And write a novel?
A. I would love to, but no.
Q. He says it flatly.
R. [Ríe] I don’t have that ability, really, I don’t. I have started some, but I don’t know, it’s like… Right away I go to the images and I have to go back to the script.
Q. You see the world more through images than words.
A. There is a symbiosis there sometimes.
Q. The magic happens when that symbiosis occurs.
A. Exactly.
