In The Virgin of the Quarry Lake [+leggi anche:
recensione
intervista: Laura Casabé
scheda film], magic is a part of life – just like desire, jealousy and fear. Natalia (Dolores Oliverio), who’s spending another lazy summer with her childhood friends and a boy she’s hopelessly in love with, is about to discover them all. We found out more from the film’s director, Laura Casabé, after its screening at Sundance.

Cineuropa: I have a huge affection for films that play with genre rules. Here, you make us believe, once again, that women have special powers.
Laura Casabé: We do! I’m a big horror fan. I watch all sorts of genre movies. I like them, but the way I think about genre and horror is that it should allow you to do interesting things. I’m not interested in cheap thrills or jump scares. For me, it was more about figuring out how to talk about this girl and what she’s going through at this moment. You have some “witchcraft” and explosions of violence, and it’s all mixed up with the 2001 crisis in Argentina. Speaking of witchcraft, we have a connection to it, for sure, but here, it’s also about the synergy between friends. They are teenagers, overflowing with desire. I wanted to portray these girls as really, well, horny. They want to start this part of life and claim their sexuality. It’s all so intense that it becomes intimidating.

Remember that movie from the 1990s, The Craft? Of course you do [laughs]! After I saw it, I would copy their make-up and everything else. I wanted to show my own modern pop witches, also establishing that what’s happening to Natalia is real. In Latin America, witchcraft is more about pagan rituals. My grandmother was like that, too. She knew little spells, and if you had a problem, maybe she would fix it. Our reality is always intertwined with the supernatural. It’s so normal that nobody even talks about it.

How normal did you want it to feel? It’s true – strange things happen in Natalia’s neighbourhood and nobody seems particularly shocked.
I wanted to make it look like a part of everyday life. Sometimes, when you’re surrounded by violence, you become numb. You detach. And then something wakes you up, like that homeless man with his cart. He curses this place, but he also “curses” it with misery and poverty. We are so afraid of becoming poor, of losing everything, and it happens so often in Argentina. There is this idea that misery can be contagious.

Usually, when you have a girl discovering supernatural abilities, she’s the outsider. She’s mocked and bullied – just like Carrie. Natalia’s not like that. She’s the “pretty one”, her friends point out.
I liked that twisted idea, and with the screenwriter [Benjamín Naishtat], we talked about Natalia a lot. We knew it was a risky take because how is anyone going to sympathise with her? Also, the popular girl is usually the “mean girl”. And she’s pretty mean, but I never wanted to follow a bully. It changed a bit from Mariana Enríquez’s novel [that the film is based on]. Natalia is actually very vulnerable. There’s this other girl, Sylvia, who’s older. She knows about bands and books. She might be a phony, but she’s interesting – suddenly, Natalia’s not enough. It happens. You can be pretty and popular, and someone’s going to come and make you feel like shit. Natalia is not satisfied with herself, with sex or with what’s going on.

There is a lot of pressure to always show solidarity among women or girls. I get it, but it can be more complicated. One of the girls says: “I don’t like myself.” Natalia answers: “I don’t like myself either.” No wonder they see this other woman as a threat.
I’m a feminist, feminist, feminist all the way. But if we don’t talk about our own complexity, we are going to romanticise something that’s not true. It’s interesting to talk about all of these dark corners of our nature. I don’t judge them: it’s just the reality of it. It’s a part of who we are: we compete. Right now, we are more aware of these things, but back then? When it comes to the scene you just mentioned, some people told me it’s strange, because friends should support each other. But I can be nasty to my friends, and my friends can be nasty to me. That’s how it works. Sometimes I like you, and sometimes I don’t. But they do back her up when it’s needed.

What happens at the quarry lake, stays at the quarry lake. You talk about class, you reference politics, but sex is another massive component. Some of the scenes here I’ve seen before – but with boys experiencing them, never girls.
It was there from the beginning. It was important to talk about sexuality in an honest way – to talk not only about masturbation and satisfaction, but also about masturbation when you don’t get satisfaction. When we see similar stories, we feel bad about ourselves as women. You see the way we are portrayed in movies, objectified, and you feel something’s wrong. That scene when they finally decide to take this big step? It was something I also talked about with my friends. We didn’t do it in the end, so now I could at least put it in the film [laughs]. It’s not about love; it’s about desire, and I wanted to talk about feminine desire.

When you decided that she was going to have these powers, and struggle to control them, how did you want to show them?  You feel something is odd, but for the longest time, you are not sure what.
I wanted people to wonder: “Is this really happening?” Movies are much more interesting when you have doubts. Maybe it’s just her surroundings? Back then, people were on the edge. They had no money, and lootings were happening every day. Violence would just erupt and go from zero to ten. I like gore [in films], but sometimes you can make things even more interesting.

We made these jokes, calling her “Carrie from the outskirts of Buenos Aires,” but I wanted to keep the audience guessing until the end. Of course, there’s also the question of the budget, but some good ideas came up because we had no money. We needed it to feel real. Something is growing inside of Natalia, but it’s growing slowly.