With Bitter Christmas, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón (Rome, 57 years old) enters the Almodóvar world for the second time. And in this case, her character, Mónica, the assistant to the main director, has much more weight than the one she played in Parallel Mothers (2021), for which she was nominated for the Goya for Best Supporting Actress. It is also Sánchez-Gijón’s second visit to Cannes: she was a juror in the edition where Dancer in the Dark won and In the Mood for Love received the Grand Jury Prize. “I was very impressed by Björk and Von Trier’s film,” she recalls.
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Sitting on the terrace of the Marriott hotel, where this year the teams of the Competition films are staying, Sánchez-Gijón smiles. The weather is good, it is Tuesday noon, and she has two interviews left before lunch. In this one, it is evident how the personal life of the actress and that of her character intersect in unexpected ways.
Question. Your character is built from fiction and fragments of real people. From where did you build it?
Answer. Observing, talking with Pedro’s surroundings. I did not intend to embody anyone in particular, because Pedro himself wanted to make it very clear that this is fiction. And there are enough elements to create this character from a very deep and very recognizable pain. Moreover, well, now I can tell it… My mother just passed away three weeks ago. And the shooting coincided with the diagnosis of her cancer. Mónica’s pain in the face of loss and mourning, so personal and in her intimate life, is mine. My emotional and pain source also came from the personal. As an actress, you soak up the environment, you drink from your own sources.
Q. Lately, your personal life has undergone media scrutiny. Are you aware of the powerful echo of your words when entering the theater: “What are you doing? Please, I have a show to do”?
A. I have never speculated with my life. Nor have I speculated, shared, or aired my private life. And it is something I will continue to do as long as I live. For me, there is something in the gossip press, the tabloid press, that seems… predatory. There is also something deeply reactionary in that type of press that ideologically repels me, a circus I have never been part of and never will be. I respect my privacy and intend for it to be respected. Everything else seems like violations to me. I share what I want, when I want, and with whom I want. Beyond that, it is something that attacks my freedom and is intolerable to me. I have never spoken about anything.
I respect my privacy and intend for it to be respected. Everything else seems like violations”
Q. It must have been weeks of emotional rollercoaster.
A. Yes.
Q. It is curious the echo between your character’s defense of privacy and your own.
A. It is true. I share up to where I want with whom I want, but that the other, whoever it is, in this case the character of filmmaker Raúl [played by Leonardo Sbaraglia], uses without my permission my intimacy shared with him, in this case in the fiction of the film, for Mónica means crossing ethical boundaries and breaking a professional and personal relationship of many years, much affection, and much shared life. For me, Pedro exposes himself in a very brave, very honest way, I believe, very little self-indulgent, and I think that shows. I got the role of Jiminy Cricket: I am his conscience, the mirror in which he is looking and measuring himself. And that was also very enjoyable to do because I felt like I had impunity, I felt like I was telling Pedro four things, right [laughs]?
Q. Could you be the first person to put Almodóvar in his place?
A. With that freedom and impunity? I don’t think so, but we are talking about the character, let’s see… Well, I have gone through a fantastic place.
Q. Have you ever encountered a director who parasitized you like that?
A. No, it has never happened to me. Although Mario Vargas Llosa wrote a very beautiful story about our performances of The Plague Story, with our names and surnames, fictionalizing what we were living.
Q. When you were given this script and, reading, reached the final confrontation, did you rub your hands?
A. I thought: “The party is coming.” Although my first joy came earlier, when I read the phrase with which I threaten the director, my boss and friend, to break his legs. I felt it was another glorious phrase, like “I am apolitical” from Parallel Mothers. Another gem Pedro gave me. At the same time, I wondered if, after a film that goes in another direction, this moment would hold up, because it changes code. It is an absolutely theatrical sequence, which in fact took us four days to shoot. Pedro also had his doubts, and he conveyed them to Leo and me. He was nervous about that ending because he had to be sure it was going to work: the film was directed towards that ending. And I think that is why I found a much more demanding Pedro than in Parallel Mothers. He limited the ground a lot, made us go through a narrow path with cliffs on both sides. Leo and I took it as a truly theatrical job and, in fact, something that was initially a disadvantage, which is that after preparing so much with Pedro we took a month to start shooting because Pedro began filming Bárbara’s plot in the fiction, became an advantage. That month Leo and I used to meet and review everything we had together as if it were a play. With that ending, it elevates the film after playing with the viewer. Pedro makes a great pirouette and criticizes and questions himself. Of course, it turns the film into something surprising.
Q. Don’t you think cinema loves you little?
A. But how much theater loves me! It is true that I had absolutely incredible years in which I did all the cinema in the world, in all parts of the world, in all kinds of cinematographies. That moment of splendor ended at some point. Nevertheless, I am lucky to have worked twice with Pedro Almodóvar in recent years. And with this profession, you never know what will happen around the corner.
Q. Don’t you feel this film reaffirms you?
A. I also don’t feel the need to be proving things. I feel very satisfied with my career and also take these ups and downs as something natural. I have never stopped working, I have always lived from this. I do a lot of TV, we are already on the third season of Respira. I can’t keep up. I don’t have enough life to do everything I do. Would I love cinema to have more consistent, solid, leading roles for me? Of course, but theater fulfills me in a way… The most intense professional challenges I have had in the last 10, 15 years have undoubtedly happened in theater. I have thrown myself into pools: circus knife throwers have thrown knives at me in a play with Andrés Lima, I have done a contemporary dance show throwing myself into the void and running in heels on a treadmill. I am currently performing Malquerida, which is also a very extreme, interpretive exercise. I am more than fulfilled.
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