When he saw it on a platform, Sergi Belbel already realized that The Party was a very theatrical film, but in the midst of the pandemic he did not see beyond it. It was Jofre Borràs, who is now the assistant director, who proposed to the production company Anexa to turn that little wonder of the seventh art in black and white into a theatrical piece. Having requested the relevant permits, they did not put any blame on them. So, the one that will premiere at Poliorama on September 15 will be the first theatrical adaptation of the film.
The party is a 2017 British film, written and directed by Sally Potter, which tells the story of the party the new Minister of Health throws with a group of friends to celebrate her appointment. Everything will go from bad to worse, needless to say, and Potter will shoot at everything and everyone, pretty much ignoring the conventions of current political correctness.
Belbel celebrates the fact that the author is a woman, because this exonerates her from being accused of many things that a man would find reprehensible: “It’s good that the author is a woman, because she crosses some politically correct thresholds that, if if a man had written them, they could bite his crest. All the current topics come up, but without the viewer having the feeling that they are talking about these topics: health, public and private health, feminism, homosexuality… It leaves no stone unturned.”
The adapter and director is very enthusiastic about this project, because he was able to play the game of similarities. If Potter had Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall, Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer and Cillian Murphy, Belbel will premiere it with Marta Ribera, Lluís Soler, Àngels Gonyalons, Jordi Díaz, Montse Guallar, Queralt Casasayas and Biel Duran, a luxury cast.
When Anexa proposed the project to him, Belbel immediately accepted it: “I immediately said yes because I saw what was so British in our society and in our Mediterranean reality, with a certain progressive left that has not done so well as we expected them to do”. The director describes The party as “political vaudeville”.
“The great surprise – he continues – is that the text is written as a single theatrical scene. It looks like theater and I don’t know if it’s before or after the movie. Sally Potter has given us absolute freedom to adapt it and change the music we want. We have decided to keep the British scope, with the English names, because adapting it to a Minister of Health was too small for us. It is a very short and fast-paced work, which requires very precise work”.
Belbel has set out to go unnoticed as a director: “It’s a play with a lot of characters, and my job is that you see seven people in action and that you don’t see my footprint”. And he also explains why they have kept the title in English: “We have not translated it to be able to keep the double meaning of party (party and political party): the new Minister of Health is having a party with her friends, fellow party members” .
The playwright also explains how he made the adaptation: “When I translated and versioned the text, I forgot about the film, and I didn’t watch it again until the end. When I did, to check that I hadn’t made a mistake in something, I got bored, because I had already seen her a few times, and I realized that I had taken her to a very different place. In the theatrical production there are 20% of lines that are not in the film”, he concludes.
Tickets, with a 25% Club Vanguardia discount, can be purchased here.
