Writer-director Pablo Larraín, best known for his trilogy “Jackie,” “Spencer” and “Maria,” ventures into Argentina for the first time in “My Sad Dead” (“Mis muertos tristes”), based on three stories by Argentinean writer Mariana Enriquez. It stars some of Argentina’s brightest talent, led by Mercedes Moran, Dolores Fonzi, Alejandra Flechner and Carolina Álvarez. Not unlike his 2023 feature “The Count” (“El Conde”), “My Sad Dead” enters into genre territory.
The Netflix four-part miniseries produced by Larraín’s btoher Juan de Dioas Larraón and their label Fabula, was made into a feature version of nearly three hours to vie for the Golden Shell in San Sebastian’s official competition.
The story follows Ema (Moran), a recently retired doctor who can see and hear the dead. She is haunted by her mother’s death and her own unfinished business. When her niece Julie arrives and three teenagers are murdered in the violence-ridden neighborhood of Piedrabuena, something strange begins to spread, tearing apart the fragile boundary between the living and the dead. What was once Ema’s burden becomes everyone’s nightmare. The dead are making themselves heard – and no one can escape their ghosts.
In an interview with Variety in San Sebastian, Larraín and Enriquez held forth on their adaptation, which they co-wrote with Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón, a coscribe on “The Club,” “Neruda” and “El Conde,” and Anastasia Ayazi (“Patagonia”)
Mariana, what inspired you to write these stories? Are they purely sourced from your imagination or inspired by events and people you know?
Enriquez: Like Ema, my mother is a doctor who has worked in a public hospital, and the neighborhood in the book is based on a real neighborhood. It’s different, but quite similar to my idea of the periphery, outside the city, kind of a forgotten place. Many of the violent situations are real situations, distorted a bit to make them more or less fictional. Of course, the woman who can speak to the dead is fictional, but it’s not that far removed from reality.
But these stories of women or people who can speak to the dead – do you actually know people who see them?
Enriquez: My aunt used to see my grandmother everywhere. My mother is very peculiar, she smells things, which is very weird. Like, she would be here, for example, and suddenly smell gasoline. And that means something. Not that the car is going to explode, but the smell isn’t supposed to be there. It’s not a phantom smell. It alerts her that something is going to happen. My aunties are more straightforward, seeing ghosts, that kind of thing.
And how did you come up with the character of the niece who engages in sex with ghosts.
Enriquez: Well, I’m very interested in genre in general. There was a famous movie in the ’80s called ‘The Entity,’ a horror movie where a woman is visited by spirits and has sex with them. You could see the hands touching her in a very cool special effect, but it was not consensual. I remember being very upset watching it and through the years I kept thinking: what if it was consensual? And I started thinking about the saints who said they were married to the Holy Spirit and this idea of a woman being able to touch the other side and actually have a physical relationship with it – not a relationship of fear, but of pleasure, of ecstasy, of sanity, in a way.
Pablo, This is your first time to shoot in Argentina, how was that experience?
Larraín: Of course, Argentina is our neighbor, but growing up, I was always more aware of our differences than our similarities. Then there’s always a moment when things can change. I’ve been to Argentina to travel around the country and I know it quite well, especially Buenos Aires. But doing this, working there, really looking around the city and engaging with local people, the local crews and everybody, I started to understand that the things that are similar are way more than the things that are different. There’s so much in common. It was fascinating. I really felt at home in a way. I know that for foreigners it’s obvious – they look down there in South America and think they must be very similar. But for me, it was a whole process to discover that.
I interviewed Gael Garcia Bernal a few weeks ago who’s worked with you on several films [“No,” “Ema”, “Neruda”] and he said that what he admires about you is your fearlessness in filmmaking – this attitude of, ‘Let’s just go for it. Let’s try. Let’s break it.’ Would you care to comment on that?
Larraín: Well, that’s kind and generous of him. He’s a friend, so I understand that, but I don’t really see it like that. I work with what feels comfortable. For example, when we approached Mariana and said, ‘Would you be okay? Would you join us? Would you want to be part of this adaptation?’ I had really got into her narrative and into the idea of trying to express visually what she wrote somehow. You could call it an adaptation, but there’s something about traveling from the book towards a visual representation that was very relevant.
What did you find the most challenging and interesting aspects of this project?
Larraín: I do think there’s something very beautiful and very unusual about the sound space, the number of things that are relevant for the story that we don’t see, but only hear. It’s massive, very unusual and very challenging, especially knowing that most people will see this on television. Everything that is not in the frame but has a sound that is relevant for the story, is very intriguing to me to work with. I think that was one of the most challenging things: to bring into the sound space things that are never seen in the story.
I think what I really found interesting and maybe discovered later in the process, is that when we talk about dead people and about the memory we have of them and how we experience them – whether we feel them, remember them in dreams, physically see them, or hear them – it’s always from the perspective of the living person.
What I think Mariana has found in this narrative is that now we get to know what the dead are also feeling when they’re claiming their presence and saying, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ They’re also saying, ‘Please, I need your attention.’ And so, it’s interesting because now we get to understand them a little bit more. There’s empathy towards them and I think that’s very gracious.
