In “Dismantling an Elephant,” Spanish director Aitor Echeverría delivers an exploration of addiction’s ripple effects within a family, framed through an intimate mother-daughter dynamic. The film stars Emma Suárez, a triple Goya winner known for Pedro Almodóvar’s “Julieta,” and Natalia de Molina, who has claimed two Goyas, including one for “Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed.” Co-stars include Darío Grandinetti (“Talk to Her”) and Alba Guilera (“One Year, One Night”).
For both of the film’s lead actors, Echeverría’s vision and the script were immediate draws. “It had such an original cinematic take on addiction, the story was told in a subtle way and the visual language was very elegant,” Suárez tells Variety. “And then, meeting Aitor, the director. He transmitted a lot of confidence and put a lot of faith in our work.”
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De Molina echoes her co-star’s sentiment, explaining that her journey with the film began years ago. “I met Aitor in 2018 when he first spoke to me about the film. Straight after, he sent me the script, and, after all this time, here we are. I had absolutely no doubts that I wanted to be a part of this project.” she says. “I never doubted his vision either, nor the story he wanted to tell…I feel like he trusted me, just like I trusted him. That energy that feeds off itself, the risk-taking, the first chances, the blind trust, the artistic sensibilities… honestly, these aren’t things you find that often.”
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The film captures addiction as a disease that transcends the individual. It opens with Blanca asleep, drunk, and oblivious to a fire taking hold in another room of her house. To prepare, Suárez and de Molina immersed themselves in the world of those affected. “Seeing as we play mother and daughter, Natalia and I, along with the director, carried out exhaustive research,” Suárez reveals. “We went to family therapy sessions and to rehabilitation centers, where the people were so generous to share such vulnerable moments with us.”
De Molina emphasizes the intricate co-dependence between their characters. “The disease we talk about in the film is contagious, in the sense that the person with the addiction isn’t the only one who suffers, but rather everyone around them,” she explaines. “In this case, Blanca and Marga are like a mirror. The symptom of Marga’s emotional sickness is alcohol, but Blanca’s is Marga herself. Each member of the family deals with this disease as best they can. There is no one way to handle it. There are thousands of ways to survive it.”
Both characters’ professions—Marga’s architecture and Blanca’s dance—serve as metaphors for their inner lives. “For the character of Marga, who’s an architect, there’s a metaphor with respect to her own internal emptiness within the space she inhabits. ” Suárez says. “That house, which in the film she has designed herself, is now her cage.”
Meanwhile, de Molina faced the challenge of embodying a professional dancer. “I’m not a dancer. I’ve never studied contemporary dance. I would’ve loved to, and in some way, by playing this character, I’ve fulfilled that dream.” she says. “But I realized straight away that the complexity of constructing Blanca didn’t only reside in dancing in the most correct and most beautiful way, surrounded, as I was, by a company of professional dancers and shooting those scenes as sequence shots, but rather in being able to transmit, through that dance, through those rehearsal scenes, through my body, the emotional state she is in, in order to be able to understand her at her ending. It was one of the most complicated things I’ve ever done. I put a lot of pressure on myself and didn’t really enjoy the process. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure whether it was me or Blanca who was going through those emotions… and that’s something that’s never happened to me before.”
There is ambiguity in the story, which invites the audience to interpret it. We know little of this family; there is wealth, and there are deep wounds, yet they struggle to live together. “The film opens up a lot of questions and generates profound and interesting debates,” Suárez notes. “It’s very satisfying because it was one of the aims of ‘Dismantling an Elephant’: for the spectator to be free to think and inhabit the work.”
De Molina frames this openness as a hallmark of auteur filmmaking. “Everything is subjective and relative. It’s not in your hands how each individual lives, thinks, feels… and I like that. When I’m playing a role, I can either be very clear about the character’s journey or not. Sometimes, it’s more interesting working from a place of doubt …My barometer is being inside the character and forgetting about everything else.” she explained. “This is what adult filmmaking and independent, auteur filmmaking is all about, and that is what this film is.”
Yet, de Molina believes the true thematic core of the film lies beyond addiction. “In this great love story, because at the end of the day, that’s what it is, a great love story with its chiaroscuro, the elephant we’re talking about isn’t addiction, but rather silence.” she reflects. “It’s always better to talk, to face our problems head-on, and to deal with them as best we can, even though it might seem impossible. That will always be better than pretending they don’t exist.”
The film is a testament to the benefits of giving a debut filmmaker star backing. Reflecting on Spanish cinema more generally, Suárez is optimistic about its future. “I’m excited about the diversity of projects and their subject matters, as well as the freedom with which they’re being made,” she said. “The new generation of filmmakers is full of enthusiasm and passion, and that gives me confidence for the future.”
De Molina, however, has some concerns over creeping conservatism in the industry. “I feel like less risks are being taken and formulas are just being repeated,” she says. “It’s form over substance, and people are too concerned about being politically correct. I like awkwardness in art, things that pull you out of your comfort zone, and it is true that there are a lot of filmmakers coming up who want to regenerate and start again from another place, but they’re the ones who have it the hardest, the ones who receive the least amount of support and the ones who get clobbered the most.”
“Dismantling an Elephant” comes from Barcelona-based Arcadia Motion Pictures, the production company behind Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s foreign-language César winner “The Beasts” and the Academy Award-nominated animated feature “Robot Dreams.” The film is backed by Spanish production-sales-distribution powerhouse Filmax.
