Agustín Adba
Penélope, Agustín Adba (2018)
Agustín Adba is an Argentinian screenwriter, director and film producer. Portraying a young woman liberated from the conventions of polite society, his debut feature film Penélope premiered at the Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Cinema.
In an exclusive interview with Filmatique, Adba discusses diffuse desire versus gender binarism, wandering women, the superficiality of the art world and his next projects.
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FILMATIQUE: Penélope revolves around the titular character, a young woman living in Buenos Aires who splits her time between architecture school and the city's bohemian art world. How did you conceive of this story, and how did it evolve over time?
AGUSTÍN ADBA: The conception of this story has to do with my nighttime experiences over the last four years. I tried to generate a fantastic world revolving around the perspective of a woman who wants to continue behaving like a teenager. Penélope seems not to care about anything. Maybe that disinterest is just a mechanism to belong or to be heard.
As time went by the film started having new nuances, and therefore I took the time for re-shoots. I needed more trivial everyday moments in the character's life, daily chores. Penélope escapes obligations such as study or work. I don't know for how long, but she is reluctant to acknowledge the fact that she will have to become a grown woman with responsibilities.
I'm interested in showing a character who takes her own path, who does not await compliments or approval from her peers. Penélope throws herself into the void and is carried away by her instincts without weighing the consequences.
FLMTQ: Subverting gender stereotypes, Penélope is a character defined by freedom of sexual desire, casually flirting and forming relationships with men and women alike. What motivated you to focus on such an unconventional female character, and how does Penélope compare with other female protagonists in Argentine cinema?
AA: We live in a time where day by day we lose our binary formation. I think that's what happens to Penélope. She has no preferences for men or women because she seeks to form a bond with a human being. In a certain way she has a progressive look on relationships. I think that that is what's happening nowadays, people who continue to have a traditional or "closed" morality do so for fear of leaving a space of comfort. It is on the threshold of those limits where Penelope knows to handle herself better.
I like to compare it with the character from Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, where we see a wandering woman disturbed by a crash and conflicted in her personal relations. In Penélope's case we see a woman who also wanders by her instincts and desires without thinking much. The only way to endure the anguish of her thoughtfulness is through misaligned moral action.
Penélope, Agustín Adba (2018)
FLMTQ: The more time Penélope spends orbiting the city's artistic circles, the more vapid and superficial they reveal themselves to be. In this way the film can be read as meta-critical, communicating a certain truth about the state of affairs in Buenos Aires' cultural scene. What statement, if any, did you seek to make with the film?
AA: Penélope is an outsider in the city's artistic circles. She does not belong there but wanders there because of a need to belong. I think that this type of character will always be transformed in some way into something superficial, because they have a different perspective from that of the artist. The same scene would never allow her to completely belong because she is not an artist.
In turn, Penélope never tries to please others or say something brilliant. Being herself she only has a sexual libido in relation to these artistic spaces. On the other hand, I think it could be said that this artistic scene itself is superficial. I think we move in a critical and banal environment where after naming ourselves artists, that same word vanishes leaving only the shell. Today we have little place for creation.
My statement was to show the banality of the art world and how an unpolished diamond is hidden inside it. Art is dominated by aristocrats who film and build the scene. As a punk, Penélope spits on that scene and from an outside point of view it becomes banal, empty and snobbish.
Penélope, Agustín Adba (2018)