INTERVIEW: Mother, daughter try to connect in Paula Hernández’s ‘The Sleepwalkers’
Photo: The Sleepwalkers features Érica Rivas as Luisa, a mother at odds with her teenage daughter. Photo courtesy of Cinema Tropical / Provided by press rep with permission.
Paula Hernández, writer and director of The Sleepwalkers, was influenced by her own life when she constructed the script for her new movie. Her thoughts on motherhood, daughterhood and the connections between the two informed her storytelling and led to The Sleepwalkers, which is Argentina’s candidate for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards.
In the film, Luisa (Érica Rivas) has headed to the countryside with her husband and 14-year-old daughter Ana (Ornella D’Elía). The intention is to have a restful summer vacation, but mother and daughter don’t connect, and fighting ensues. Luisa is facing difficult questions at this stage in her life, and Ana is learning what it means to be a teenager. The two don’t always bond and see eye to eye.
“The film is mostly an intimate and deep question about family ties,” Hernández said in a recent phone interview. “Probably when I became a mother the number of questions and uncertainties arose about that unique bond and also about the idea of, what is a family? Why did you become a mother? How do you connect with a little new life and with everyone that is around? What is the fair distance between parents and children in the growth of our kids?”
The director said that motherhood confronts women with important questions about identity and connection, so it was only natural that her personal experiences would influence her filmmaking. Eventually, that real-life inspiration became a fictional world with invented characters who struggle with these same issues.
“This is the same time when Luisa doesn’t know how to relate with her [daughter],” she said. “She doesn’t know how to connect with her, and Ana is in a moment in which she needs to have her independence, her own point of view of life. She needs to explore her desire, her new body. It’s that moment in which this girl has a lot of questions that are very difficult in that moment. … She needs to feel different from her.”
The movie is called The Sleepwalkers, or Los Sonámbulos, because of Ana’s penchant for walking around at night. However, that title is actually a metaphor on how this family lives their life. In some ways, they don’t know how to process or respond to what’s going on in their surroundings, much like a sleepwalker.
“I like this idea of working it as a thriller in a way, with this idea of what’s going on with the night,” Hernández said. “The night is the moment in which people should go and rest and be quiet, and when you cannot do that it’s very disturbing.”
The location of this country house is also important for the overall plot. In fact, the actual house where Hernández filmed was in her mind during the writing stage. The structure was a point of inspiration for her throughout the entire production process. “When I was writing I was thinking that was the perfect place to shoot this,” the director said. “This idea that when you go outside to a farm and you are in connection with nature, everything is going to be happy and relaxed, this idea is completely the opposite. … They always have this idea that the danger could come from outside, but the danger is inside the family. And it’s a place where they can’t move. They are stuck in that place, so, yeah, it’s very important the location.”
Hernández added: “In a way, it’s a coming-of-age story for Ana and maybe middle-age crisis for Luisa because these are two people who are in a moment in which they are rethinking themselves.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Sleepwalkers (Los Sonámbulos), written and directed by Paula Hernández, is the official selection from Argentina for the International Feature Film category at the 93rd Academy Awards. Click here for more information.
