Interview: Diego Luna on creating ABEL

Actor/director Diego Luna is probably the most personable man in cinema. Despite receiving a standing ovation for his latest film ABEL during Cannes, he still laughs in humbled surprise when I compliment his work. Often dubbed a veteran actor of Mexican New Wave, Luna’s celebrated collaborations with Gael Garcia Bernal have allowed Spanish-speaking films such as Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN and RUDO Y CURSI to gain well-deserved recognition.

Throughout his career, Luna has appeared in a generous handful of English speaking roles such as FRIDA, THE TERMINAL and MILK. But when stepping into to his directorial shoes, like many great storytellers, Diego Luna remains faithfully tied to his roots.

On a crackling phone line to Mexico, we spoke to director Diego Luna about the meaning of movies, childhood and the unique process behind the making of ABEL:

THN: Diego Luna, What do movies mean to you?
Luna: Everything. An amazing way to dig into yourself. It is a fantastic mirror and tool of change in so many ways.

THN: Christopher had never acted before this, how did introduce him to the process?
Luna: The rule was never to give him the script or anything, he could never know what the script was about or what was going to happen with his character. Every day I would tell him exactly what I needed from him that day, which made it quite easy for him because there wasn’t that sense of pressure, he didn’t know the whole picture. We started in this strange kind of a world where he is not talking, not saying anything to anyone. For two weeks he just thought this was a film about a very quiet young boy. Then one day I tell him “now we are going to start talking” and he launches in to the scene where he shouts ‘SELENE!’ after weeks of silence.

THN: The relationship between them seemed very strong on screen.
Luna: Yes, well she was a fantastic actress too. For the adults there was no real rehearsal with the kids at all. I would bring them in to reverse the scene with me and then bring them into the kids and explain the shoot. Often they were acting in front of nothing….For the kids, in order to make it as real as possible for them, I made it as difficult as possible for the adults.

THN: Where did the original concept for Abel’s story come from?
Luna: It comes from many places, it comes from a book I read which I friend of mine wrote where the kid in the story has a mental illness. That triggered my thinking about a child that pretended to be an adult. Later, I went to see a production of Hamlet in England, maybe 5 years ago and the actor had this really baby-face you know? I don’t know who he was, but he had this baby face and I came out of the theatre, turned to my father and said, “Dad, what if we made a 9 year old Hamlet?” At that time we were talking about a theatre production. We got really drunk and decided the whole project then. The next day we woke up and said “oh my god that was shit”. So we never did it. But the structure of the film has a lot to do we that, the idea kept coming back to a child returning home, the father not being there and the he having to figure out what to do, he is not ready to become a man.

The important centre of the story is the absence of the father figure and this difficult relationship with the mother. Its strange because many single mothers have spoken to me since making this film and they have told me that after going through a divorce, the toughest part was trying to get the kids out of their beds. They try to take the place of the father. Every time I go away traveling, my two year old will try and take my place in my bed too!

THN: This is actually your second film, J.C. CHAVEZ being your first. How did you find this second experience?
Luna: Yes, many count documentary as film and many don’t. J.C. CHAVEZ was a documentary which is a different kind of film but at the same time you have an hour or an hour and a half to tell a story. It definitely gave me the confidence to do ABEL, it was a great first step. The thing with a documentary is, the process is more organic, you have time to get to the answers and the story is already out there. The story changes and changes, you believe you are going to tell a story about one thing but then you go out and do the research finding the characters and then finally you realise that the story should be about something else. In fiction it’s all about writing, the editing is a big process but once you have the re-write of the script, most of the job is done.