It has been a great week for Enric Auquer. The actor premieres a new film tomorrow, Quest, Antonina Obrador’s debut film filmed in Mallorca. And today he was nominated for a Goya Award as best leading actor for his portrayal of a professor from the Republic who really wants to teach in The Teacher Who Promised the Sea.
Auquer will compete with David Verdaguer, who becomes the comedian Eugenio in They Know That; Hovik Keuchkerian, who plays a tough gardener in Love; Alberto Ammann, who has a tough time at the United States border in Upon Entry, and Manolo Solo, nominated for Close Your Eyes.
Despite so much hustle and bustle, Enric Auquer stopped by the La Vanguardia editorial office yesterday to chat about the premiere of Quest, where he shares the bill with Laia Manzanares, and his work activity, which will branch out in the coming months between cinema and theater .
How did you join the Quest project?
They contacted me, I read the script and it didn’t scare me, so I said, come on, let’s try it. I was wanting to make more experimental cinema. Then I met Antonia Obrador, I liked her very much and we became good friends. She came to my house to work for a week and we did a cool dive.
In Quest you play a biologist who settles on a desert island to study the vegetation and feels strange things. How have you prepared the role?
It has been a process of inner investment and above all, trying to give life to a very empirical man, a scientist, who at the same time is experiencing deep mourning and sadness. Furthermore, I have been building a magical journey, which represents a destruction of masculinity as we understand it, because Lluc, my character, allows himself to be overcome by sadness and the strangeness of emotions that he does not control.
What is Lluc’s trip like?
It is a non-conclusive journey and it is not dogmatic either, because it is a very sensory film that guides the viewer in this journey through the senses.
There is something strange about that island and everything that surrounds Lluc…
There is something ghostly, a strange relationship with a sister. Everything is strange. But I like it, because it raises situations that at first are not completely understood. There is a legend. On full moon nights a cave opens on the island and if you enter, you find a candle with your name on it, that candle is your life…
Where did they film?
In Mallorca at the beginning of winter, with the sun low, with the calicha and with the Tramuntana, which is very familiar to me because it is very similar to the Empordà and I am from there.
In addition to Quest and The Master Who Promised the Sea, you just shot another film…
Yes. A house in flames, run by Dani de la Orden. It is a comedy and comedies are difficult for me, because I feel that I move better in drama, but I have enjoyed it a lot. Also in the cast are Emma Vilarasau, María Rodríguez, Alberto San Juan, Clara Segura, José Pérez Ocaña and Macarena García. We have filmed in Cadaqués and my character is an absolute frivolous person, the only thing he lives for is romantic love. He is a musician, although a terrible one, but he spends his time composing love songs for his girlfriends.
You also have a new theater project…
Yes, with Iván Morales in the Lliure de Gràcia. It is an adaptation of Francisco Casavella’s novel El día del Watusi. I play Fernando Atienza, a character who was born in the little houses of Montjuïc and who on August 17, 1971 suffers a trauma and sees a myth fall. Adapting Casavella is a huge challenge but the team is incredible, the editing is very intelligent and the dramaturgy is beautiful.
