Antist is a small town in La Vall Fosca with only three permanent inhabitants all year round. Elena Trapé and her team have traveled to this idyllic spot surrounded by nature and a disconcerting silence to shoot Els Encantats. The third feature film by the Catalan director after Blog and Les distàncies tells the story of Irene, a woman who, after separating, ends up in the town of her childhood with the desire to find the desired feeling of security she had as a child, when she passed summers there and nothing was so complicated.
The story, shot in Catalan, starring Laia Costa and accompanied in the cast by Pep Cruz, Aina Clotet, Daniel Pérez-Prada and debutant Ainara Elejalde -Karra Elejalde’s daughter-, takes place over a weekend, first that Irene (Costa) also spends without her four-year-old daughter.
The script, drawn up by Trapé together with Miguel Ibáñez Monroy, was born before shooting Les distàncies and “the idea was to talk about a moment of change for a mother who had just separated and had to assimilate a new reality in general and, above all, the separation from her daughter, which is something that she had not contemplated and that causes her pain that she cannot explain,” the director told La Vanguardia during a break in filming. Trapé says that he wanted to focus on the figure of the children “because almost always in a breakup there is a tendency to focus on the couple and, when there are children involved, the situation is different. We start from the concept that you think your child will experience things in which you will not be present”.
Irene’s house in fiction belongs to the parents of a friend of Trapé. A stone and wood construction with a large window that leads to spectacular views. “There is something about the history of the town, about the reconstruction of this area that was abandoned years ago, and we found that it had something beautiful. Suddenly, someone who does not know where he is returns to the family home where he keeps good memories. And he is very alone, here the silence overwhelms at night”. Trapé also cites the influence of a book by Pere Coll on the myths and legends of La Vall Fosca. “We found these beings, the enchanted ones, that live in the cracks in the rocks and have become trapped there,” she says.
And he adds that it is a film “that can move because of the burden of the feeling of failure, of facing a new stage, and it also has some comedy because in the most complicated moments there is always something absurd that makes one laugh. There are many scenes So”. The filmmaker wanted an actress who was her mother for the role and it was Isabel Coixet who told her about Laia Costa. “As soon as I saw her I knew it was her. I’m very happy with her work.”
The Barcelona actress, who returns to work in a Spanish production after the success of Cinco lobitos, in which she plays a new mother, received the project in the midst of a pandemic. He affirms that he was struck by “the physical flight that we were all experiencing, that search for a place that was not a small apartment in the city. Running away from it and getting into a place where a priori you have never considered living” . About her character, he was attracted by the fact that there is a very clumsy escape from the emotional that interested me. In those first three days that Irene is alone, it’s interesting to see those internal changes,” she continues.
The actress believes that this story would be like “a second phase” of what Five Little Wolves tells, shortlisted for the Oscars. “What interests me the most are the stories of the characters. In Els Encantats there is something very cool because it is an aesthetic camera proposal that is very different from what I have done so far. Light is a priority when shooting and I am learning She maintains that Irene “is very human” and lives in a “constant error”. “She thinks she knows how to deal with a situation she has never experienced before. If we knew how to manage ourselves emotionally we would not suffer. Tell me who never suffers!, she exclaims with a wide smile.
Filming started on August 22 in Barcelona “very hot” and a week later they moved to La Vall Fosca, where they will stay until the end of September. “It’s cool here and you eat very well,” confesses Costa.
In Els Encantats Pep Cruz takes on a character inspired by Agustí, the promoter of the reconstruction of all the Antist houses. “I came 15 days before shooting to inspect the land and meet Agustí and talk to the people in the area. That’s how you get an idea of ??what to do and how to work it.” Agustí, who is an engineer, lived in the town but at eleven he went to the city to study. When he returned he saw that everything had fallen and he gave himself body and soul to its reconstruction: “he built the bell tower of the church, the houses, he looked for subsidies… and it is something that is also seen in the surrounding towns. It is being repopulated as a result of the pandemic,” says the veteran Catalan actor. “My character plays her as Irene’s grandfather, they have a loving relationship with her. He has known her since she was a child and he is concerned to see her sad,” he explains.
Madrid-born Daniel Pérez-Prada, a popular face thanks above all to the series El pueblo, was given the role of Eric “out of sheer insistence because ever since I saw the photo of Antist on the cover of the dossier that my agent showed me, I knew I wanted being here. There is something about the rural environment, about the bucolic of the history of the towns that appeals to me a lot”, comments this lover of the cinema that is being made in Catalonia. With Laia he had already coincided in 2015 in the series Carlos, King Emperor “but he did not remember me. We were many actors and we were only together one day,” he says resignedly.
His Eric is “the patch of Laia’s character. Someone very generous, who likes him. The typical person who appears in people’s lives and who, if he had done it at another time and in another circumstance, would have been perfect. Due to circumstances we we meet in his town, he wants things to work, but…” and that’s it.
There is no doubt that he is paying dearly for his commitment to appear in the film because he is shooting the next season of El pueblo in Soria and the next day he is in the Pyrenees. “There are things that are worth it and this story is worth it,” she insists. The film, co-produced by Coming Soon and A Contracorriente, is scheduled to be released on the big screen in 2023.
