Her final degree work became a collective feature film, Júlia ist, which she signed with other fellow students. Now only 31 years old, she is already an established director, because her second film, Creature, has been a success since it won the prize at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes last spring until the night of this on Sunday, when it destroyed the Gaudí.
Elena Martín already flies alone. He wrote the script for the film with Clara Roquet, directed it and also stars in it. His next stop is the Goyas, for which Creatura has received four nominations. Before traveling to Valladolid, Martín makes a stop at the editorial office of La Vanguardia to explain the details of this film that delves into the complexities of female sexual desire. An almost taboo subject that cinema and other artistic disciplines have not yet explored in depth.
How was the collaboration with Roquet to write the script for Creature on four hands?
We knew each other very little, through some mutual friends. When I had already been working on the film for more than a year, researching and writing, I sent it to Clara just to let her know if she saw any possibility of it being shot. I wanted advice, but she loved it and suggested we write it together. It was very exciting. We understood each other very well and now we are very good friends.
Why did you decide to make a film about female sexuality?
Talking to my friends I realized that we have a very complex sexuality. I started asking other women of different generations and realized that no one has a smooth, crystal-clear, smooth relationship with it. Almost all of us suffer from contradictions between our body and our desire.
So did the investigation begin?
Yes. Some of the women I spoke to told me, for example, that they can’t have sex with the light on, or that they’re too embarrassed to see themselves naked in the mirror, or that they can’t feel their breasts, or that they don’t masturbate because they it’s embarrassing Other colleagues told me memories of childhood masturbation. I thought we never talk about it and I was very clear that I would make the film.
The investigation continued with specialists…
I’m a millennial, which means I do therapy, and it didn’t take me long to ask my therapist about it. She became a counselor in the scripting process. At one point we thought that Mila, the protagonist of Creatura, was anorgasmic, but she advised us against it because this dysfunction was not consistent with the picture presented by the character.
Do the problems with sexual desire have to do with the lack of education in this matter?
The girls who are now teenagers have indeed received lectures at school, but even so, they feel it as something very scientific or didactic. Shame education still exists. I think the most convenient thing would be to teach that sex is wonderful, but that it has its time, its space. And to be able to speak it much more naturally.
Mila suffers from a blockage due to the type of relationship she had with her father as a child. Is this usual?
Some men treat their daughters like babies when they are girls, but when they get their period and their breasts grow, they don’t know how to relate to them anymore. There is a constant negotiation during adolescence between fathers and daughters.
Does this make it difficult to talk about sex?
Even people who have a very fluid relationship with their children can have difficulties, because there is a lot of social pressure. The idea that telling your parents you’re having sex will disappoint them is widespread. It is very different to tell your daughter “don’t disappoint me”, as Mila’s mother does in the film, than to have a calm conversation to resolve her doubts.
Creatura posits that sexist behaviors are still widespread among today’s teenagers…
There is no education in consent or respect. Many boys still believe that in order to belong to the group they must perpetuate certain attitudes. Perhaps the key would be to educate boys by showing them that playing cool is actually a sign of weakness and lack of self-esteem so that the idea spreads that the boy who identifies with this archetype is actually a jerk .
Despite this, is there already a generation of young people educated in equality?
Yes. The boys who play Mila’s group when she is a teenager come from a theater group, belong to a cultural and open environment. We were shooting a scene where the characters had to score a girl’s body and they felt very shy about doing it, they didn’t see it well and I had to put them in context, because the situation it took place in the year 2000, when feminism had not yet taken root and it was not understood that this kind of attitude is verbal aggression.
Have things changed for girls too?
To some extent. The young actresses in the film told me that now, when they go out partying, if a guy touches their ass, they know perfectly well that they have the right to get his attention. But that doesn’t mean guys stop touching their ass. But at least they have a much clearer speech than the women of our generation, since many of us have had experiences that were abuse and we only understood it with time.
Mila is not anorgasmic, but she does not enjoy sex with her partner, Marcel (Oriol Pla). What is the diagnosis?
It is not a diagnosis, because he does not suffer from any pathology, but he does have a psychological picture caused by his sexual development in childhood.
When does sexual awakening occur?
Approximately, because each person is different, between the ages of three and six. They call it the genital stage. It is an awakening of the nerve endings of the whole body and it is a moment that is related to the desire to know, that stage in which the child constantly asks “why?”. The first impulses are always towards the parents or guardians, because the child feels safer with people close to him. A rejection or abuse can mark the child’s sexual future.
Do men suffer from blockages too?
And so, we’ve seen it in many of the men we’ve interviewed, and that’s why the male characters, Mila’s partner and father, also suffer from strong blockages. Marcel assures that everything is fine, but he is uncomfortable with the sex that goes beyond what would be, let’s say, normative and it bothers him that Mila proposes to him to give him some sex.
What are your projects after the success of Creatura?
Theater as an actress. I will start rehearsing after the Goya Awards this February. It is a work by the VVAA collective, with whom I have been working for many years, for the National Theater of Catalonia. I will work only as an actress and I am really looking forward to it. I also have something that might end up being a movie, but for now it’s nothing more than a sketch I wrote on a ramp last summer.
