“The loved one” works in layers. It evokes a difficult relationship between Esteban, an absent father and his daughter, now an adult Emilia, the love story between this man and the mother years before but also the world of cinema. How do you manage to organize the story?
At the start, we have a main subject, then others appear naturally. This was also the case forThe Beasts. The challenge is to make all these elements organic. The figure of the mother was crucial for us. She only appears in one scene, but she was much more present in the first versions of the script.
Ultimately, we preferred this balance: we hardly see her, but we talk a lot about her and listen to her messages. She is the pivot of all the protagonist’s affect.
How was this theme of fatherhood born? Is there a need to explore family ties after your previous thrillers?
Isabel Peña, my co-writer, and I are both only children. We wanted to move away from the thriller or the western to tell a normal, human story. Whether present or absent, everyone has a father.
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