The film “The Invisible” talks about social classes, mental health and loneliness

Málaga (Spain), 21 Mar The Ecuadorian Javier Andrade released today in the Spanish city of Malaga his reflective bomb, “The Invisible”, an intimate, intense, feminine and terribly distressing film that falls entirely on the shoulders (never better said) of its protagonist, Anahí Hoeneisen, Luisa. “I wanted to make a very beautiful film, very aesthetically beautiful, about a person who is very lonely”, explained the Ecuadorian at a press conference held after the screening of the film, which is competing for the Golden Biznaga at the 25th Malaga Film Festival. The idea of “The Invisible”, he explained, was born from the collaboration with the actress, who is also the co-author of the script, and her husband, photographer Andrés Andrade (nothing to do with the director), to create “a character that will draw a type of melancholy or depression and make that depression for a female character”. Thus, “the film is made for her”, and they found it interesting to consider it on the highest scale of Ecuadorian society: “As the heir to the hacienda, to the great owners of the fief, and to see where that was in the 21st century,” she said. “The invisible” is everything there is in the life of this poor rich girl, accused of having wanted to harm her baby, and that the viewer knows when she has left a psychiatric hospital after several months -her streak of the dye tells it very intelligently-, who misleads the return home between forbidden pills and drinks, unsatisfied and uncomfortable, but above all, invisible. She only finds peace next to her tata, a Quechua Indian who superbly plays the amateur actress Matilde Lagos -Andrade found her in a theater center for seniors, her “Indigenous Dua Lipa”, she says, because she also sings and dances-, the only one who calms and understands her. A mother who isn't, but who cradles her like she doesn't know how to do with her baby. “The idea was to make the reverse of my first film, “Better not to talk (about certain things)”, 2012, shot in the Andes, with a voiceover that dominates the narration and male characters.” For this reason, the director points out, “we deliberately decided that it would be more of an experience film than a plot, again in contrast to my previous film, which had a very obvious plot. We believed that a powerful performance would serve to sustain an ambiguous situation, but very concrete in the cinematographic field.” In the same way, he points out the importance of silences, “noisy silences”, he says, while noises are not heard, he also starts from this invisibility of a woman unable to govern her pain, who self-harm and degrades only to see if, in this way, she can cope with grief. “We wanted to build a situation and an environment that triggered issues of class, mental health and loneliness, depression is something that worries me personally and when Anahí came in we decided that it was something specifically female,” says Andrade. The director recalls that there were a couple of ideas that were at the origin: “That story from which he went for tobacco and didn't come back.” And a reflection his brother gave him: “People have children as anchors for their relationship to be saved, but sometimes that doesn't work.” They analyzed what would happen to this woman; that led them to the postpartum period, to investigate the cries, the loneliness, the feeling of guilt. Then, the pandemic played in his favor and gave him “a year and a half” to assemble the film “and create the atmosphere that works”. The film ends with a Quechua lullaby, sung without cuts by Matilde Lagos, “Manila”, while looking out a huge window into the forest through which Luisa has disappeared. EFE