appearances can be deceiving. But not always and not all. In 1982, the upper-class suffered in their meat an economic crisis that led president López Portillo to nationalize the banking system. Gone are the birthday ponies, goodbye to buy ball gowns in the stranger, to dance to Julio Iglesias and I forget to live… Even some had to leave the exclusive neighborhood of Las Lomas, where they lived outside of any external problem. The fall in disgrace of one of these girls, well, incarnate miraculously by Ilse Salas (Cantinflas, Güeros) launches the script, never better said, girls well, Alejandra Márquez Abella (San Luis Potosi, 37 years old), producer of Holy Week (2015), who has now achieved his breakthrough by winning the Biznaga de Oro at the festival de Málaga-best ibero-american film.
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I forgot to live The great tragedy of ‘The girls ‘ well – ’
Marquez starts to explain the emergence of the music of the Churches in his tragicomedy: “I Wanted to use his anger to take the viewer to another’s anger, the addiction of the elite mexican to Spain, a country that we colonised. Them, with that passion for music, they want to belong to another world, even ethnically, above the others. With Julio Iglesias I can talk to almost pop out of that aspiration. I appeared in Hello!, a magazine in the eighties in Mexico was a privilege. Took a long time to get a couple of months and only for the chosen.” The same goes for the mention of The English Court. “It was the store where all the moms and aunts wanted to buy the clothes of their sons and nephews, because it was superexclusivo… Is the entire collection of mexican to be Spanish placed in a fun way”.
the seed of The well-off girls is the novel of the same name by Guadalupe Loaeza, 1985. “This project came to me as the request of the producers, who bet on me to write it and direct it,” recalls Marquez. “And I refused the first time. Flatly. For a bias similar, if not identical, that they have had a lot of viewers before the premiere of the film. I soon realized that this material would allow me to talk about inequities in an original way, with a new look, going to the high-class instead of those who were most damaged by the crisis and, obviously, by the opulence of the elite,” recalls the filmmaker by phone. “You had to understand what they clung to power, to maintain the inequality that still today in countries like Mexico,” he insists. “It was an adaptation difficult in terms of the book collects a series of news coverage published over three years on a daily basis”. The director stresses that the main feature of the volume was the humorous, “and that’s it”. She wanted to move away from the farce. “I feel that the comedy, even though it is a weapon sharp for these portraits, has given a turn to those characters in Mexico and saved them. Don’t questions. And I wanted to look you in the eyes”.
In The girls, well there is oppression, and, above all, absolute contempt for the oppressors. There are moments in which the high-class freak out because his servants did not let them dominate. “I took great care in showing that, although he could not lose of view that the viewer should accompany the characters along the footage. You can’t hate them the first time”. Background, in addition, the machismo prevailing, then and now. “They encourage, especially in the elite, with that understanding of themselves as girls -something that interested me very much-as eternal minors in need of a man to protect them, to make the decisions for them. The real life passes by in front of them as if it were not with them at all.”
A final detail. Márquez Abella is well aware of the parallelism between the upper-class mexican and Spanish. “It’s very clear, I like people to see it. The snooty Spanish is identical to the strawberry mexican”. The director knows of what he speaks, because he studied in Barcelona 13 years ago. And also echoes with the current situation: “there will Always be that light and to denounce those who oppress”.
