“Powerful and subtle”: Penélope Cruz finds one of her best roles in this Spanish social thriller

What is it about ? A lawyer with strong social convictions, Rafa has until midnight to find the mother of a little girl left alone in unsanitary accommodation. Otherwise, the police will place the little one in a home. In his race against time, Rafa crosses paths with Azucena, a woman unjustly threatened with expulsion, and who, to get out of it, tries to provoke a citizen revolt. As the hours pass implacably for these two struggling souls, Madrid becomes the place of all anger…

An actor behind the camera

Juan Diego Botto is an actor and screenwriter for the theatre. With A contretemps, he made his first feature film: “Almost all my theater revolves around the same theme. In general, exile, impunity, memory are very present in my work. Even the last work I wrote, Une nuit sans Lune on García Lorca, which I thought different. After analysis, I realized that I had written again about a missing man, a man who was abducted from his home, illegally arrested, tortured, shot and reported missing.”

“We still don’t know where his body is. I believe that my theater agrees with À Contretemps on two points: first, the question of impunity, with this struggle of human beings against invisible institutions that are much more powerful than the individual. And the other point is the price to pay for this struggle, the price of activism, so to speak, for those who try to change things and who are represented by Rafa (played by Luis Tosar). Others see him as a hero, but he also leaves something behind.”

Juan Diego Botto has acted in more than 50 Spanish, Argentinian and American films, as well as in a dozen television productions and several plays. Among his film roles, we can cite those he holds in Broken Silence, Obaba by Montxo Armendáriz, Full Moon by Imanol Uribe, The Europeans, Go Away From Me by Víctor García Leon, The Dancer Upstairs by John Malkovich, The Suicide Squad by James Gunn (as dictator Silvio Luna) or Roma by Adolfo Aristarain.

He has also written six plays, including An invisible trozo from este mundo (MAX Award for Best Show, Best Actor and Best New Writer) and Una Noche sin Lunafor which he received three MAX awards, as well as the 2021 National Theater Award.

Birth of the project

À Contretemps was born from a conversation between Juan Diego Botto and Penélope Cruz (the filmmaker and the actress have known each other since adolescence): “She suggested that I write for the cinema. I started writing, and I had the idea of ​​a scene in which a couple were discussing the day before their rental eviction. It went from there”he explains.

Learn about evictions

Thanks to Olga Rodríguez, journalist and co-screenwriter of the film, Juan Diego Botto learned about the situation of the evictions in depth. They did extensive research for more than a year with families in eviction proceedings and interviewed educators, social workers and lawyers: “When you have known this reality in depth, it is very difficult to stay away from what is visibly an attack, a social abuse, vis-à-vis and against the most disadvantaged.”

“It motivated us to tell this story. There were a lot of versions of the script, because it was a lot of years between writing and financing, and then there was the pandemic. It was a very long process. In a story about a specific reality, the point of view is implicit, the point of view on the ethics in question is implicit in the injustice that is told”recalls the director.

Non-professional actors

If the film is carried by very big stars, Juan Diego Botto also called on non-professional actors for certain roles: “The research process was so long, so complex and so productive that we felt it was going to include those who had been so generous in letting us into their homes and telling us their stories.”

“One day, Olga Rodríguez had the idea of ​​filming an assembly, so we included this footage and we knew it had to be a real assembly where everyone was talking about their case. Reality is always much stronger and more heartbreaking than reality. fiction. Their stories are horrific. If we told their real cases, the film would be much more dramatic.”

High-flying cast

Juan Diego Botto has assembled a high-flying cast: “As for Penélope, it was obvious. She is at the origin of the story. For Luis also. From the moment the character of this lawyer appeared, I immediately thought of him. He is one of the best actors in Spain. Then we auditioned Adelfa Calvo (Teodora).”

“She’s an exceptional actress, who seemed a little young to me for the character. We imagined her to be older. But she delivered such a great audition that it could only be her. The young Christian Checa is also awesome. We’ve auditioned hundreds of teenagers, and Christian has delivered several outstanding auditions.”

“The same thing happened with Aixa Villagran (Helena). We had already made a choice before this last audition. She blew me away. And I said to myself: “It’s her”. She had done something very different from the others. What stands out from the film, I think, is the wonderful work of all the actors.”recalls the Spanish director.