INTERVIEW: For the two men in ‘End of the Century,’ timing is key
Photo: Juan Barberini and Ramón Pujol star in Lucio Castro’s End of the Century. Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild / Provided by press site with permission.
End of the Century, the debut feature from director Lucio Castro, finds two men starting a romance near the sun-soaked beach of Barcelona. However, as viewers come to realize, not all is what it seems. These characters, Ocho (Juan Barberini) and Javi (Ramón Pujol), may have a shared history, one they don’t even fully comprehend.
The film has been celebrated on the festival circuit, including winning top prize at the Buenos Aires Film Festival and Best First Film at Frameline: San Francisco LGBTQ Film Festival. It was also an official selection at New Directors/New Films and Outfest: Los Angeles Film Festival.
In the film, which is now playing in movie theaters, Ocho is an Argentine poet enjoying a vacation in Barcelona. That’s where he eyes Javi, a Spaniard from Berlin. They talk, they laugh, they make love, they journey toward self-discovery.
“It took me basically just around three months to write it, so I started the whole thing a year and a half ago,” Castro said in a recent phone interview. “I knew I was going to shoot in Barcelona, so I started writing the story kind of restricted or thinking about the city of Barcelona.”
After deciding on the location, Castro started to picture himself in a city he didn’t know too well, and then he considered the possibilities of what would happen next.
“The character looks at the city, does some tourism and then meets someone, and then after a while they realize they actually had already met 20 years ago,” the director said of the gay romance. “Then I just imagined the beginning of their first encounter. It happened in a very organic way. … The story was written without having a master plan of the whole structure.”
To bring End of the Century to life, Castro needed his two main actors to trust him and trust each other. For the pivotal Ocho role, he needed a smart actor who could understand the story and the differing time periods portrayed in the narrative. Castro found that perfect actor in Barberini.
“We didn’t have a lot of time to prep or rehearse, so I needed them to acquire chemistry really fast,” he said of his two main actors. “They met the day before we started shooting, and they had one day to basically get to know each other. They were both really, really good actors.”
By the end of the filming process, Barberini and Pujol became fast friends, Castro said. They had obviously been on a journey together, one that required authenticity, intimacy and chemistry.
“Juan is Argentine, and I found him through a casting director in Argentina who had made a play with him,” Castro said. “Then I watched his movies. And he’s a guy who seems very confident at first, but he has an insecure side to him that I liked. And Ramón, the other guy, is almost the opposite. He feels a little bit more sensitive and a little more insecure at first. There is something very insecure about his core, and I kind of like that combination to match them.”
To make this debut feature, Castro relied on the available lights and the beautiful sunlight in Barcelona — meaning no rented lights. This gives the picture an interesting and alluring cinematography.
These production decisions were part of Castro’s “survival-mode” style of filmmaking.
“You just need to make scene after scene,” he said about the quick pace of production. “So you’re always in a constant struggle against adversity. Of course, when I wrote the scenes, there are some that came out really fast and some that we did a lot of takes. The dancing scene took 32 takes, not only because them acting but also because of the camera movement, and some others took like three takes. The long sequence when they’re talking, which is a very long take, it’s like almost 10 minutes, I wanted the sky to change in color to twilight. That one we only did three takes because it’s very long.”
He added: “I was aware that [the actors] were good, but I think that now that I see it as a distance, I’m almost a little surprised at how great they are.”
At first, on the set, the two actors were trying to figure out what type of director Castro would be — this is his first film, after all. They particularly wanted to know how he would film the sex scenes, which are simulated, but passionate. “They wanted to know exactly what I wanted to do with those, so I think the way I relieved their anxiety was to plan it out,” Castro said. “For example, the sex scenes were very, very orchestrated. They knew exactly you’re going to see this part, your leg, your butt, your face, your head. Things were very planned and thought out. That’s why it was so seriously choreographed. They were then able to go all out, really give all they had for those takes. I do think that they were at first a little bit scared.”
Castro said his actors liked the script a lot, which was a good start to their collaboration together. They naturally had questions about the time change that encompasses these two gay characters, which is often mentioned in reviews for End of the Century, but they worked their way through the nonlinear format.
“The idea of an almost nontraditional change in time they were a little bit concerned about,” he said. “It was confusing, but then we talked about memory. … When we remember something, it’s not really accurate. We always remember ourselves in the present, but not in the past. They thought that was very, very exciting.”
And now audiences and critics, who are praising the work and comparing it to Weekend, have agreed End of the Century is one of the most exciting movies of the year — doubly so because it’s Castro’s debut film, an impressive cinematic feat.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
End of the Century, written, directed and edited by Lucio Castro, is now playing in movie theaters. Click here for more information.
