Félix Viscarret has put Paco León in the closet because of Juan José Millás. León gives life to Damián in Don’t look at the eyes , the latest film by the Navarran director based on the novel by Millás From the Shadow, a film about loneliness, voyeurism and self-confinement that this morning has kicked off the new edition of the Seminci.
Due to a strange incident, young Damián ends up hiding in the closet of a family made up of Leonor Watling, Àlex Brendemühl and their daughter María Romanillos. Damián has the opportunity to come out of the closet, but decides to stay. There is something disturbing in his behavior, but the public ends up understanding him, because “if you get into anyone’s head you find someone disturbed, we all have a stone”, says León, who has passed through Valladolid to present the film.
“Voyeurism is the main driving force behind Damián’s behaviour, who wants to listen, see and be invisible, but little by little he wants something more and the mess is brown”, adds the actor who spent a lot of time inside the closet where he came to feel “comfortable, so much so that during breaks I stayed locked up there”.
León spent the confinement alone and remembers that stage as “very constructive, because it allowed me to discover myself and that also happens to Damián”. And while for Viscarret, Don’t look into the eyes also allows “observing our behavior from the other side of the mirror, because the things we do on a daily basis have a surreal point and that is what Damián detects”.
The director explains in a talk with La Vanguardia that the key to the film “lies in the struggle between two desires, that of belonging to the Watling family and that of disappearing and forgetting everything.” “It’s like that feeling you get in winter, when it gets dark, the neighbors turn on the lights and you wonder what life will be like in the house across the street. And that is the push that Millás gives so that the character enters the lives of others”.
Viscarret, who has already adapted novels by Leonardo Padura and Fernando Aramburu, fell in love with Millás’ book and the writer reciprocated: “he has already seen the film five or six times and he never tires of it”. The film also has the collaboration of Juan Diego Botto and Iñaki Gabilondo, with whom Damián engages in profound conversations that help him in this process of self-knowledge.
