INTERVIEW: Matías Piñeiro continues journey with Shakespeare’s female roles
Matías Piñeiro makes his English-language debut with the new film Hermia and Helena, which indirectly deals with characters from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The film, which is currently playing New York City’s Film Society of Lincoln Center and Metrograph, is the fourth installment in Piñeiro’s exploration of Shakespeare’s comedies and female characters. Previous efforts include Rosalinda, Viola and The Princess of France.
“It’s the continuation of a project that I have been developing since 2010, that is this series of films speaking on the female roles in Shakespeare’s comedy,” Piñeiro said in a recent phone interview. “I started with Rosalinda, continued then with Viola, and then The Princess of France and finally here Hermia and Helena. Somehow how this project got shaped has to do with me living in New York for now six years, but back then for four years, and finding a community, a group of people and friends.”
Piñeiro usually works in Buenos Aires, but for Hermia and Helena, he was determined to set the movie in the Big Apple. The story surrounds Camila (Agustina Muñoz, a regular in Piñeiro films) who travels from Buenos Aires to New York City to attend an artists’ residency. Her new theatrical project is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After landing in New York City, Camila struggles with her professional ambitions and her sense of loss for not having family and friends nearby.
Also starring in the film are María Villar, Matti Diop, Keith Poulson, Julían Larquier Tellarini and Dan Sallitt.
“I usually work in Buenos Aires with my group of friends in a context that is very much in Buenos Aires, so when I moved to New York, I was not expecting on making films here,” the director said. “But after a while, somehow the conditions that I had in Buenos Aires somehow were created here in New York.”
When Piñeiro makes a film, he typically casts actors he has worked with before or who are close friends. For some of his regulars, the work relationship with the director has lasted a decade or more.
Muñoz was tapped for the Camila role, and then it was Piñeiro’s job to fill in the characters around the central figure. Instead of holding a typical casting call, the director relied on people that he had met in New York City, friends that could bring new life to these roles.
“So, for instance, in the case of Keith Poulson,” Piñeiro said. “It was mostly when I was meeting him in a bar or in the streets of New York just by chance that I had this impression that he could work well next to Agustina, that they would somehow match. It was a hunch, but it was a hunch that I had to trust. I like him. I like how he talks, how he moves. There was something about him that made it possible in my mind to picture him in this role, and then on the other side of the things is Dan Sallitt, who is a filmmaker. And he never acted, but I trusted also him. I had this hunch.”
Piñeiro became interested in Shakespeare’s comedies not because he comes from a life in the theater, but because he began reading the plays on the side while working on other cinematic projects. “It all began with an interest in the text,” he said. “I don’t come from theater. I came to Shakespeare from reading Shakespeare. I was writing my second feature … that has nothing to do with Shakespeare, and I was reading Shakespeare as a companion piece.”
The rhythmic words of the playwright entranced the filmmaker, and he began seeing his cast of friends having fun with the words on screen.
Even though he didn’t start in theater, and only came to Shakespeare by picking up the plays and reading them himself, Piñeiro has now fully entered the world of the Bard.
“After doing my first Shakespeare film that is Rosalinda, they asked me in Buenos Aires to do a play,” he said. “I never did theater, but they invited me. They were inviting artists who had never done theater to do their first play, so they asked me to do something. And I thought about doing a [combination] of Shakespeare comedies, and somehow I merged the sentimental line of five Shakespeare plays. And somehow those five Shakespeare plays are the ones that I’m doing now. … I always think that my films connect between each other, that they’re sort of brothers and sisters in a way.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Hermia and Helena is currently playing in movie theaters and on VOD. Click here for more information.
