27/06/2024 - In his amusing first feature film, the Spanish filmmaker pays homage to his country's backroads, US cinema and the bloody anti-hero in all of us

(© Cinemajove)

Devil Dog Road [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Guillermo Polo
film profile] was not only the opening film of the 39th Cinema Jove - Valencia International Film Festival, which will be held between 20 and 29 June, but also competes in the official section. Its director and co-writer, Guillermo Polo, born in the city, met with Cineuropa to share details about his debut film.

Cineuropa: How much has the project changed from the original idea?
Guillermo Polo: It has been changing for the better. Because it has changed a lot. There are characters, such as the bully, who I’ve given a lot of thought to so as not to fall into cliché, updating certain cinematographic references, asking us questions that we didn't ask ourselves before. In that sense, the film has gotten better. As Paula Ortiz said, to be a filmmaker you also have to be a fortune teller and know what is going to be interesting in five years' time, because everything changes from the moment you start the project until the film is released.

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Your film has a certain American feel to it, even though it was shot in Spain.
When I got back after years of living in the United States, I realised that there’s a certain iconography here that reminds us of American indie cinema. But, I haven’t recreated spaces that do not exist: for example, the canyons and the red desert that you see on screen are in Aragon, although they may remind us of Arizona and New Mexico. In Spain there are not as many distances as in the United States, so it is difficult to stretch the story like there. But there are also some films that have been made by travelling across Europe.

Why is the title Devil Dog Road?
Because there was a moment when I wanted to shoot the film in the United States and that was the name of a road in California, going to Los Angeles, which I passed by, I liked it and I borrowed it.

You have previously made many music videos and short films. Have they helped you in learning how to direct a feature film?
Yes, I was also cinematographer on The Mystery of the Pink Flamingo [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and in a videoclip I explored the universe of the film. Everything helped me to handle this one better.

In the film by your brother Javier, the colours were also saturated, as in Devil Dog Road.
I think he has a bit more of a pop and kitsch profile, with more abundance of colour and I'm a bit darker.

And Valencia, where you are from and where we are now, is very colourful.
It's like Spanish California, with the sky so blue and sunny, which tends to enhance the colours.

Devil Dog Road is a bit like a comic.
That’s right, because both the characters and the places they pass through have that magnetism or are passed through a cinematographic filter. They are places I wanted to pay homage to, because they are in danger of extinction. We’ve given value in Spain to the oldest culture, such as castles and cathedrals, but the bars, hostels and petrol stations of the last century are being razed to the ground and in a hundred years' time we won't have any reference to them. So, I wanted to document it in my film.

When we laugh at the protagonist's misfortunes, do we somehow exorcise our own?
Losers work well in fiction because we may all have been losers at one time or another. When you see a character going through these circumstances it also reflects your pathos and vulnerability. Life itself has such comic and dramatic elements. For example, at a celebration everything can become tense because someone says something wrong.

It is also a somewhat hallucinatory film.
Lysergic, yes. Films always set out on a journey, even if it is an inner or metaphorical one. In this case there is a journey within the journey thanks to the drugs consumed by some of the characters.

Did you have as much fun filming it as it looks like watching it?
I think so, although it was difficult because we had to travel a lot. Also, as it’s a debut film with limited resources, with many characters and chases. We shot in the provinces of Valencia, Alicante, Aragon and the Canary Islands, but it was very enjoyable.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)