Intacto : Production Notes


Intacto is a provocative thriller that uses a strikingly cool visual style, and is directed by first time feature director, JUAN CARLOS FRESNADILLO whose previous work, Esposados (Linked), earned an Academy Award â nomination for Best Live Action Short Film in 1997. Fresnadillo, riding on the crest of the Spanish New Wave, filmed much of Intacto amidst the otherworldly landscape of his native Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, as well as in Madrid.
Intacto began its gestation inside the fertile mind of its director and co-writer, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, when as a boy on March 27, 1977, he witnessed the aftermath of history's worst airline disaster. At the airport in his native Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in Spain's Canary Islands, two 747 jumbo jets collided on a runway, with 578 people losing their lives. It was a cataclysm of mammoth proportions, and it set young Fresnadillo thinking about the nature of fate and luck.
"It was the first time that I saw such a huge airplane," recalls Fresnadillo about that fateful, tragic day. "My mother was driving us to a cafe as we passed the airport, and I remember seeing the huge aircraft on the runway awaiting permission to take off. The vision disappeared along the treetops. When we arrived at the cafe, I remember the ambulances traveling in the opposite direction.

"For the first time ever, our car broke down," continues Fresnadillo, "just outside the entrance to the airport. I got out and saw the cloud of dark smoke illuminated by the airport lights. I couldn't see anything, but there was a sour smell in the air. I felt like a spectator standing outside a stadium without tickets to a soccer match. Two civilian guards came over to assist us. I remember my mother asking them what had occurred at the airport, while my father was completely silent. I think it was that exact moment that gave birth to Intacto. It must have been due to my father's silence, my mother's curiosity, and the guards retelling of the events of luck and death. They were unaware that a nine-year-old boy was registering everything in his mind. .. just as a survivor captures an event that almost killed him with a video camera. "

These memories permeate every frame of Intacto, a film in which luck and death engage in a constant dance with each of its main characters. And it was this subject matter, which engaged Fresnadillo to create his first feature-length motion picture following the great international success of his short film, Esposados (Linked).

"I think that Intacto is a thriller with a bit of fable," Fresnadillo states. "It was very important for us to make the story universal, and it was one of the premises that we stuck to when Andres Koppel and I started to write the script. We wanted the film to be understood and viewed anywhere, and have everyone be able to identify with the story. "

While preparing the project, Fresnadillo, Koppel and executive producers Fernando Bovaira and Enrique Lopez Lavigne did a great deal of research into the works of another writer and novelist, the late Primo Levi. A Holocaust survivor himself, Levi wrote a series of extraordinary works, which boldly examined inevitable themes emerging from such a catastrophe, perhaps most notably what came to be known as "survivor guilt. " The filmmakers found Levi's work extremely illuminating in creating the character of Sam, a man whose massive guilt as the possessor of "undeserved luck" underscores his entire existence. Sam is a deeply complex figure, a man with an ultimate death wish as a way of atoning for his own survival. The extreme "games" in which he indulges are a means to a desired end, which keeps eluding him.

In selecting his actors, Fresnadillo was absolutely clear on who he wanted to inhabit the crucial role of Sam, this tormented "God of Chance"--the great Max von Sydow, a performer of immense authority. "Sam is a magnetic figure who has his own empire," the actor notes. "He rules it and believes that he was practically chosen to be the one to handle chance. "

For his other leads, Fresnadillo dipped into the considerable talent pool of contemporary Spanish cinema, including Argentinean-born star Leonardo Sbaraglia to portray Tomas. "I had been following Leonardo's work for years," notes the director. I saw the work he did with the Argentinean director Marcelo Pineyro, and felt that he would be able to capture the true essence of the character. I knew that Leonardo would be able to combine the physical and soulful characteristics that were required for the character of Tomas. "

Fresnadillo also cast the fine Spanish actor Eusebio Poncela as Federico, who seeks to use Tomas' luck as a means to a serious end, noting that "Eusebio has the conviction and authority to bring out the commitment and seriousness of the character"; Monica Lopez as Sara, a police investigator tormented by a past she is unable to overcome, having survived a car crash which killed her husband and child (ironically, Lopez is herself a survivor of a devastating car crash which occurred in 1987); and Antonio Dechent as Alejandro, a bullfighter who, miraculously, has never been gored or injured in the corrido.

Fresnadillo became intimately acquainted with the characters created by himself and writing collaborator Andres Koppel, and the strange world they inhabit: "The film is basically centered around Tomas, a thief who has the good luck to survive a plane crash and the bad luck of being caught. We examine the difference between good and bad luck, and how the two can sometimes be confused or merge into one another.

"Federico is calm, and never loses his cool. He is the guide, the one who will take you on a journey straight to Hell. Tomas, who is completely ignorant and innocent about this new world, is brought into it since he's a fugitive and has no other choice if he wants to retain his freedom. Federico leads Tomas into this unknown world. .. a world like no other. " Helping Fresnadillo to create this "world like no other" was a superb team of creative artists, including director of photography Xavier Jimenez and art director Cesar Macarron. "I'm fascinated by the entire story," says Jimenez. "It provides the opportunity for constant change in lighting and locations. The film was like a gift to me. "

In a sense, the shooting echoed the odyssey of its characters. "Since the film deals with a journey," says Fresnadillo, "this demanded numerous locations. That alone made the production challenging, as we never spent more than two days in any one location. This caused everyone to feel as if they were in constant movement. "

In addition to several locations in Madrid, perhaps the most remarkable visual sequences were shot in the director's rugged, otherworldly birthplace, the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Morocco. International film audiences were perhaps first introduced to the Canary Islands when it served, appropriately enough, as the prehistoric backdrop for the campy dawn-of-man goings-on in One Million Years B. C. , which starred Raquel Welch in a skimpy animal-skin bikini.

The Canary Islands reveal a primeval landscape of stunning, offbeat beauty, and Tamagana was a highly appropriate location for the bizarre sight of Sam's flashy casino, right in the middle of a lava field. "Filming in the casino was an excellent idea," notes Fresnadillo. "Apart from using something that is already there, we were also able to demonstrate the beauty of its 1960s decor. It's appropriate that the film begins and ends in Tamagana, in the middle of nowhere, a volcanic valley, the home of Sam, where everyone comes to find the answers to life. "

Author : Lions Gate Films