Spanish filmmaker Ana Asensio talks to us about the research and the creative process underpinning her second feature, Goat Girl [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Ana Asensio
fiche film], presented out of competition at the 28th Málaga Film Festival.

Cineuropa: Your feature debut, Most Beautiful Island [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Ana Asensio
fiche film], was a very dark film. This second effort, while full of light, talks about how the dark and mysterious sides of life are seen through the innocent eyes of a child.
Ana Asensio: Childhood is full of mysteries, and thanks to their innate curiosity, children usually try to decipher them by confronting their own fears. The film presents itself as a window on that world, as seen through the eyes of an eight-year-old girl, who has so many questions and an insatiable need to find answers.

Your first film was based on an autobiographical story, whereas Goat Girl exudes a certain nostalgia for childhood.
Most Beautiful Island was inspired by some of my own personal experiences in New York, as well as by stories of other women I know. In contrast, this film’s origins lie in fragmented memories of my own childhood – memories that, while vague and blurry, still give shape to a fictional story about something that could have happened. It doesn’t revolve around any specific details of my family or my childhood, but it does reflect the essence of a lived childhood from a critical standpoint, exactly as I experienced it.

It's also a portrait of the childhood of a whole generation.
Spain at the end of the 1980s was a reflection of the transformation of a country yearning to express itself, to go out into the streets and to demonstrate publicly and freely. It wasn’t just a political transition, but also a social and artistic revolution. This context is present in the subtext of the film, which is intertwined with the needs of the female figures in a family – the grandmother, the mother and the girl – who, in different ways, try to break away from what had been established as a given in their lives up until that point.

It’s a generation on which religion had a very significant influence.
At that time, the Catholic religion was even present in secular state schools, like the one I went to when I was little. I remember the two children in my class during the third year of primary school who, during RE, would be taken to another classroom in order to be taught Ethics. I watched them with a certain curiosity and fascination, not fully understanding why they weren’t taking part in the same activity as the rest of the class.

The film also tells of how we experience friendship at that age, when one is still devoid of prejudice. And, as part and parcel of that, it broaches the clash between the worlds of children and adults.
That “pure” and “neutral” stage doesn’t last long, unfortunately. We adults, both in the past and nowadays, instil our personal opinions in children, treating them as if they were the absolute truth. Sometimes we do so consciously, but most of the time, we don’t realise. The ability to resist accepting what adults say, to question it, is something that you lose as you go through childhood. By the end of it, children end up forming their own opinions or fully embracing those that prevail in their immediate surroundings.

Through the voice-over, the film takes on the tone of a morality tale. Why did you want to tell the story in this way?
I always felt as though the screenplay had this certain tone of a morality tale. By navigating between the real and the imaginary, which is what happens in childhood, you open up the possibility of experimenting with a less well-defined genre and with more open-ended codes. This was something that interested me immensely on the visual and tonal levels of the film. It was during the editing process that we finally settled on the tone that I had been looking for.

In the end, the film talks about how beliefs, rituals and conventions are seen through the eyes of a girl. Was it clear to you that this perspective would constitute the crux of the entire movie?
That was always the origin of it, even when I didn’t yet have the story completely figured out. What I was most interested in was capturing that perspective, and the story is the vehicle for that premise.