GERMANY: "Dictado" by Antonio Chavarrias has viewers on edge at its Berlinale premiere

Record ID: 471055

  • Title: GERMANY: "Dictado" by Antonio Chavarrias has viewers on edge at its Berlinale premiere
  • Date: 13th February 2012
  • Summary: BERLIN, GERMANY (FEBRUARY 11, 2012) (REUTERS-ACCESS ALL) (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) ACTOR OF 'DICTADO', JUAN DIEGO BOTTO, SAYING: "When we read the script it was clearly a thriller and there is a certain codex for acting in thrillers. But nevertheless the director wanted to us to act in contradiction to this codex. He wanted a very natural note, a reality touch on a very low
  • Embargoed: 28th February 2012 12:00
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  • Location: Germany, Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Reuters ID: LVAD7YXR9W9IMMUJROD34UDSMDEN
  • Story Text: Spanish psychological thriller "Dictado" (Childish Games), depicting a man spooked by a little girl who revives a dark secret from his childhood, had viewers, too, on edge at its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday (February 11).
    When Daniel's childhood friend commits suicide, he takes the man's seven-year-old daughter into his care. But some of the girl's simplest actions put him on edge as they recall ominous childhood memories.
    "In a certain way we all know, if we don't cope with our past it will always come back to haunt us and every little spark could cause an explosion inside of us, which is seen in a very dramatic way with the character I play leading up to insanity" said Juan Diego Botto, who plays Daniel. "It is something everybody can relate to."
    Daniel is a gentle schoolteacher, in a loving relationship with Laura, played by Barbara Lennie who recently starred in Pedro Almodovar's "La piel que habito" (The skin I live in).
    But like his friend, Daniel is increasingly engulfed by irrational fears and memories of the past. During the day, he manages to repress his demons and carry on as usual, but at night they come back with a vengeance in his macabre dreams.
    "It has something from the old fairy tales. Those have their own fright, but we got used to it and consider it familiar within these stories you are eaten by a wolf or get burned" said director Antonio Chavarrias.
    "So I saw a link there, I liked the tone of those fairy tales. There was another important point in the tales, after all darkness there is always a light. In our a film it was a little bit the same. So I was thinking rather in terms of those old tales than in terms of a thriller," he added.
    The symphonic music, which recalls the scores of classic American thrillers from the 1940s and 1950s, such as those of Alfred Hitchcock, heightens the tension and threat that ultimately engulfs Daniel. Certain motifs are repeated in many variations like a growing obsession.
    Daniel's torment increasingly drives a wedge between him and his girlfriend, who desperately wants a child of her own and grows attached to the little girl.
    He becomes isolated, trapped within his own fears and jealousy.
    The girl, played by Magica Perez, appears innocent but is somehow also unsettling.
    "Yes, I like the film. When I saw it for the first time I found it a bit strange, because I saw myself on screen, but I liked it," Perez told Reuters.
    Director Chavarrias said it was challenging to make a film about evil without any villains - and it is precisely that which makes it less easy to define as a genre.
    "I didn't want to force anything, not with the light nor with the scene setting nor in the interpretation" he said.
    "I asked them (the actors) to concentrate on reality and truth. I asked them not to go out of themselves, not to construct a character outside yourself in order to magnify the story. You should build up the story from within yourself to give it the human touch. Thus the suspense and the terror which could come up comes from the terror you feel yourself, not from the light we are setting or from the framing or the decoration. It was a big challenge, because you are taking all the arms away you usually use to create a thriller," he added.
    "Dictado" is one of the films competing for the top prize at the Berlinale which runs through Sunday, February 19.
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