Sergi López has come to KVIFF to present The Next Skin, in which he delivers the kind of menacing but nuanced performance that has catapulted the Catalan actor into the upper echelon of the craft. López holds forth on the unique experience of making the film co-directed by Isaki Lacuesta and Isa Campo, on acting in four languages, and on agreeing to appear in a film based only upon being told a story.
The Next Skin had two directors – what was it like to be directed by two people at once?
It’s maybe not common; it’s rare. You’re not used to working with two voices. But in this case, they are really close. The problem would be if one director says one thing and the other says something else, but that wasn’t the case here. Isaki and Isa write together, they live together, they have a little girl – they’re a couple. They really wanted to direct the movie together. They’re a team, a real team. You speak all the time with both. You don’t feel you’re speaking to two different directors but to one director but with two heads – one a woman’s and one a man’s.
The film hinges on the suspense of not knowing if Gabriel (the son found after going missing eight years) is really someone else. Of course, you know everything from the screenplay, so how do you express this uncertainty?
The thing is we don’t know, exactly, and when I talked to the directors, I said, ‘But we need to know!’ All this doubt was completely in the movie all the time. All the characters have secrets and you don’t know what each of them is hiding. And at the end, we don’t know if he is the real guy or a fake – we play with that. It was complicated (laughs). I kept telling the directors, ‘I need to know if he’s the real one,’ but they laughed at me. When you look at the results, they were right, because I love this movie; it keeps you caught to the end.
You can read the whole interview in today's Festival Daily.
