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“This is a very, very romantic film,” Gael García Bernal said of his Berlin competition title, Another End.
The Mexican actor was speaking at the press conference for the pic this morning in the German capital alongside his co-stars Renate Reinsve, Bérénice Bejo, Olivia Williams, and Pal Aron.
“I’m very proud and happy to be part of a film,” he continued to say, that carries large elements of romance because “there aren’t so many romantic films around anymore.”
The fantasy drama is set in a near future in which new technologies allow the bereaved to temporarily bring back their departed loved ones in a different body to help them say goodbye. Bernal plays a man who loses the love of his life and is then encouraged by his sister (Bejo) to work through his grief with the help of this new technology. He connects with his dead lover in the body of another woman (Reinsve) but finds that the fleeting time with a version of her is not enough.
Another End is director Piero Messina’s second feature after The Wait, starring Juliette Binoche, which premiered in Competition in Venice in 2015.
Discussing his construction of the film’s story, Messina said he was aiming to create a narrative that held “coherent elements” interwoven with “strange elements.” He said he wasn’t trying to direct a film that was “precise” in its narrative sci-fi construction but rather in its “feeling.”
Later during the presser, Bernal was asked whether the film had changed his personal beliefs about life, death, and love, to which he responded: “Yes.”
“Usually, I would say yes, but I wouldn’t mean it. I’d just lie,” Bernal joked before continuing.
“In Western culture, we have detached the body from the life of a person. But I’ve started to wonder maybe it isn’t so separate,” he added.
Sounding off on whether she would ever sign up to use technology like the one displayed in the film, Williams was resolute.
“With all due respect to our writer, I think it’s a terrible idea to bring people back,” she said. “It patently extends the pain unless you get to meet Renate, who would fall in love with you, but in every other respect, it seems like a terrible idea.”
Pulling from recent technological advancements like Apple’s Vision Pro and reports of some wealthy donors investing in cryogenic technology, Williams added: “I also would’ve said freezing yourself cryogenically is a bad idea but there are still people who are prepared to do it. And I would have said walking down the street with a pair of goggles on that display your emails is a bad idea, but people still do it.”
She added: “But that’s what Sci-fi. It leads you down these extraordinary thought paths, and a few years later the world seems to follow.”
Another End is produced by Indigo Film (Commandante, Princess) with RAI Cinema, in association with TF1 Studio and Anton and in collaboration with Number 9 Films. Newen Connect is handling international sales.
The Berlin Film Festival runs February 15-25.
