In a context where it is increasingly difficult to charge for a cinema ticket to see a film, producers are looking for bets on solid bases to attract spectators. This is why in Hollywood, we never stop saving the successes of the past and exploiting franchises; or to search best sellers with a big fan phenomenon who wants to come and see how these pages are transferred to the cinema; as was the recent case of Break the circleone of the big surprises at the box office this year.
In Spanish cinema it is not so simple. There are no franchises beyond those created by Santiago Segura with his family comedies (as he previously did with Torrente) and a few animated hits like Tadeo Jones. Best-selling novels are also adapted, but this flow is not so common between cinema and theater. While in the USA this year the adaptation of the musical is highly anticipated Wicked, Here it is not so common to see how the phenomena of Spanish theaters move to the big screen.
There was a small boom with the Teatro del Barrio plays which became low-budget political films like b (who adapted the work Ruz-Bárcenas) either the king. Perhaps the most popular was the adaptation of The call, the musical work that put Los Javis in the industry spotlight and which they themselves adapted into their first feature film. But beyond that and classics like Lorca, which comes back from time to time in the form of versions like the one Paula Ortiz did in The bride ―adaptation of blood marriage-, there is not much more.
This is why it is surprising that ten years after its success, the adaptation of a phenomenon that surprised everyone in 2013 arrives in cinematographic form. Summer in Decemberhad already won the Calderón de la Barca award the previous year and was released the same year. Word of mouth caught on and it managed to become a success that resulted in a 2014 Max Awards nomination in the Breakthrough Authorship category and a massive tour that led to the work returning to the National Dramatic Center in 2016 and was extended until 2020.
In her leap, she does it with the same director, Carolina África, and a casting that brings together the best actresses forged in theater and then in cinema: Carmen Machi, Bárbara Lennie, Victoria Luengo, Irene Escolar and two presences who will make those who have saw the play sitting as if they were in a theater chair. The first, that of Lola Cordón, the endearing grandmother who takes on the same role. The second, that of Beatriz Grimaldos, who makes her cinema debut with the role of Alicia. She wasn’t in the original play, but she was in its sequel, because the theatrical success of Summer in December caused a sequel called Autumn in April where Grimaldos already played this character.
Although it arrived 10 years after its premiere, this delay is only due to the success of the show itself. “It was during a pandemic when Chema de la Peña, a director I had worked with as a screenwriter and whom I had invited to one of these screenings, met me in a bar and said: ‘Hey, here’s a movie.’ Since the world stopped at that point, I had time to deal with it. The process of editing the film began with writing during a pandemic, a year of editing, another of shooting. , post-production and now the premiere. So let’s say it was relatively quick,” he explains.
With such proven work with the public, they were able to analyze or at least try to understand what was the key that moved people with this neighborhood family story. Four generations of women, the grandmother, the mother, the daughters and a granddaughter, who, as in any self-respecting family, have their quarrels, their secrets and their hidden coups to discuss around the table. Beatriz Grimaldos saw the work several times as a spectator and felt challenged “on several levels”. “It moved you but without tiring you out, without looking for it, with this ability to dance between comedy and drama in a magical way. And above all, it connects you to the relationship you have with your sister, with your mother, with a daughter… you travel with them,” he says of his memory.
Carolina África presented it to the theater with the fear that her family would be identified, but then she realized that everyone was seeing their own family. “That’s how all families work, between love, hatred, between we love them, but we can’t stand them,” he says. Through this family, he also wanted to talk about other subjects such as care, but “without wanting to give big lessons, looking for these small details where the immensity burns”. “I find it very difficult to talk about very big issues except from the point of view of small people. We can understand a civil war in a fight between two brothers and it seems to me that this is where it can be done. Me, at least, with my more or less talent, I believe that I must start from the small, from what I am capable of observing and honestly transmitting it to the spectator. I don’t want to put myself above the spectator, but rather go towards this small detail which marks everything”, he analyzes.
Things that come from observing her family and the people she met in neighborhoods like those shown in the film, since she lives in the same streets where, for example, the end of the film was shot. Or those in the Alcorcón neighborhood where he grew up. Or the town of La Iglesuela del Tuétar where his family is from. “There’s something about the humility of the neighborhood. These are very real people and sometimes it’s not in fiction, or it’s aestheticized. It was very important to me that the house was a real home. They considered doing it on set, and I said no, it had to be real. I guess there’s something I came from there, and I transferred what I felt. Not in a premeditated way, but I speak from what I know,” specifies the director.
Grimaldos emphasizes houses that seem inhabited, unlike those in many current series and films: “I am very tired of seeing the house of a character who is a professor and which is a piece of a mansion with a window overlooking the sea. A teacher who cannot allow this and suddenly, there you see it. Carolina also took the shoot to locations in her neighborhood, and it’s great. His children swing on this swing, it’s his bakery… I like to see in a film that you recognize a neighborhood, and it’s easier to recognize yourself there.
In Summer in December All women are trying to find their place, but they are all plagued by problems that affect all women. They see how much of the care falls on them and no one but them. Whether it is that of the grandmother or that of the daughter of the character of Bárbara Lennie, as the director underlines in a beautiful scene which unites the two activities in a parallel montage. “Caring falls primarily on women socially, but I think it’s clear that new generations have taken a step, because Carmen Machi’s character assumes that the care task falls to her, and she doesn’t even want to delegate it to a retirement home, even if she then asks God not to have to take care of her, because she knows the sacrifice that involves,” she explains.
He presents care as “something very hard and very difficult”, and asks for “a space to take care of oneself, not just to take care of others”. Even though in the way these sisters take care of themselves, there is also a support network that keeps them alive, “there is a very deep debate around care that goes beyond the care of the grandmother.” mother, because it is something that structures the relationships between them in an intergenerational way. .”
