A Night of Etheria: De Noche y De Pronto.
Arantxa Echevarria amps up the tension in this visually stunning psychological thriller and wins the Jury Award.
Last time, we spoke with Gigi Saul Guerrero about El Gigante, definitely the goriest offering Etheria had for us. In contrast, De Noche y De Pronto has the least amount of violence of the films we’re covering. “It’s not an ordinary horror. There are no monsters, no blood. It’s only psychological,” Arantxa tells me. That doesn’t make the reaction less visceral as it certainly makes up for it in suspense.
Spain’s Arantxa Echevarria is a veteran filmmaker, having played just about every role behind the camera, and it shows. “I used to work as manager of production so I have a lot of technicians around me and I know a lot about technical stuff,” Echevarria tells me, “so I wanted to mix all that, the animation, the velocity changes of the movie.” Some of her earliest work was in animation and you can definitely see that artistic touch in the way she uses color. I could probably screencap this entire film and get all the hearts on Instagram. It’s just that pretty.
As for the woman, herself, she is extremely warm and enthusiastic and even had her DP, Pilar Sánchez Díaz, take a much better picture of her than I could. “I have a lot of stories to tell and all very different because I thought… I often think women always make one kind of cinema and I try to make a lot of them: thriller, comedy, historical, documentary. Because I think that women have to prove that we are like a male. I want to take all the genres of the cinema and make it mine, make it a woman’s look at these different kinds of movies.”
As for this film…
The film, entirely in Spanish and clocking in at 20 minutes, shows us a night in the life of Maria (Alicia Rubio), a woman living alone during the holidays. She is surprised by a man (Javier Godino), claiming that he’s her upstairs neighbor, telling her that his apartment is being robbed, and begging to just use her phone. “The idea was… a friend of mine told me that when he came back late to his house — he lived alone —he tried to open the door, it was locked from inside. He was like ‘Oh, my gosh, I live alone. Nobody has my keys. Someone is inside the door, maybe a burglar and they locked the door. I was very thrilled when he told me the story. That was the seed of the whole idea. I made a twist on his story.”
It’s definitely twisty, but I won’t spoil it for you in case you get a chance to see it. I can see why Arantxa won the Jury Award at Etheria and why her film has also picked up a nomination (Best Short Film — Fiction) at the Goya Awards, which are Spain’s version of The Oscars. It’s stunning, it’s sleek, it’s moody, and every second sets the tone.
I particularly liked her use of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in the opening credits, Judy Garland mournfully crooning over the holiday shoppers and happy families until we find Maria alone. I’ve always found it to be the most melancholy of the Christmas songs, kind of pinpointing the moment where holidays become bittersweet with age and loss and disappointment. “That’s it,” Arantxa agrees, “because Christmas used to be happy and all that stuff, but for me now, it’s a little bit sad.”
The use of tracking shots is also interesting, holding on and surrounding small moments and exploring the space, as if taking stills of Maria’s life before that night changes it forever. I’ll definitely be looking for Arantxa’s name in the future. I would love to see just how many genres she can make her own.
You can like De Noche Y De Pronto on Facebook.
Etheria Film Night is accepting film submissions for 2016. Check their website for more info here. You can also follow them on Twitter and like them on Facebook.
Next up: Chloe Okuno wins over the audience with a twist on Red Riding Hood in Slut.
*********
Love what you read? Want to follow us closer to get all the latest Legendary Women news? Then sign up for our monthly newsletter and also our Medium collection.
