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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Two of Brazil’s biggest screen stars, Rodrigo Santoro (“The Blue Trail”) and Camila Pitanga (“Basic Sanitation, the Movie”), are set to star in “Garota da Urca” (“Girl From Urca”), the new film
by renowned director Marcelo Gomes. “Oxygen Masks Will Not Drop Automatically” writer Leonardo Moreira and veteran writer-actor Luciana Paes are now confirmed to write the script. “Garota da Urca” is a co-production between Matizar Filmes and Misti Filmes.
Gomes and Santoro sat down with Variety after a lengthy conversation at the Rio Film Festival, where they expressed their mutual admiration and discussed their decades in film. Santoro, who recently starred in Gabriel Mascaro’s Berlin-winning “The Blue Trail,” is one of Brazil’s most successful screen exports, having starred in major Hollywood productions such as Richard Curtis’s “Love Actually” and Zack Snyder’s “300.” Gomes broke out into the international scene with “Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures,” which screened at Cannes’s Un Certain Regard in 2005, and has since directed major films such as “I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You,” “Joaquim,” and “Paloma.”
As for Pitanga, the actress is one of Brazil’s most popular telenovela stars, as well as having starred in films such as “I’d Receive the Worst News from Your Beautiful Lips” and “Basic Sanitation, The Movie,” which saw her share the screen with Oscar nominees Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”) and Wagner Moura (“The Secret Agent”).
Gomes prefers to keep the finer details of “Garota da Urca” under wraps, but says it is about a married couple approaching their 50s and dealing with the existential questions that come with middle age. Gomes proves ahead of the curve in his desire to tell an adult comedy about sex and love, working on his latest at a time when films like Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite” are proving greatly successful with audiences. “We’ve been working on this project for over three years, so this has been a very happy coincidence,” he says of the momentum.
“Cinema, as Tarkovsky once said, is space and time,” he adds. “This is precisely what I want to broach with the film: the space of Rio de Janeiro beyond Ipanema, and time, with people in constant dialogue about the effects of the passage of time, of how time affects the maturing of feelings.”
The director adds that “Garota da Urca” is about “understanding how we can preserve those emotions from a first date as time goes on.” “It’s not about whether or not love resists the passage of time; it’s about facing how we change over time,” he goes on. “This is the idea of the film, and we wanted to invite actors who were at the same point in life as the characters and able to lend some of this existential crisis to the people they’ll play on screen. That’s how we got to Camila and Rodrigo, and I am thrilled to be undergoing this journey with such talented actors.”
Santoro echoes this feeling of admiration, saying he has been a fan of the director for over 20 years and an admirer of how Gomes is a “filmmaker who loves his characters.”
“I feel very grateful for the opportunity to make this film with him because I can already imagine the process of making the film, which, to me, is the most precious thing,” he adds.
“I don’t pay much mind to the taboos around turning 50, but I acknowledge they exist,” continues the actor. “There is this social construct and mythology around 50, but there is also something that happens within us: you have lived a long life and acquired great experience while, at the same time, there is still so much ahead and you still feel such energy for living. I think it’s a very interesting moment of life, but I want to make known I am not facing a crisis in my marriage [laughs]. I have a wonderful marriage, two beautiful, healthy daughters, and all is well.”
“Still, I am a man, an actor, who is in my early 50s and questioning things related to being a 50-year-old man in the world of today,” he notes. “I always say the work of an actor is very therapeutic, because I end up examining my own questions through my characters. This character will deal with the obscure, and it’s an opportunity I find very precious. I feel very intrigued.”
Seeing Santoro and Pitanga share the screen is also a highly enticing prospect to Brazilian audiences, who last saw the duo together in the immensely popular 2004 telenovela “Mulheres Apaixonadas.”
“This thing with Camila is curious because we had a moment during the novela despite not being a couple,” says Santoro. “That moment did so well with audiences; the characters were so well-received, and now, with the digital phenomenon of our era, social media has resurrected that novela and one of our scenes together. I thought it was curious, but also great timing, when Marcelo told me he had both of us in mind. I’m very much looking forward to working together.”
