Locations and wanders
Locations and wanders
Walking is essential in Jonás Trueba’s creative process. Prior to writing the script or, rather, once it gets under way, all of the following steps are crucial: identifying likely locations, on-site walks shared with the team, chats along the way. It’s not a mere matter of looking for places but, rather and above all, of finding the film as you walk and talk about it while you are there.
EXT. OUTDOORS. DUSK.
Manuela is waiting. Olmo arrives riding his motorbike. She might give him a letter.
The steps of Cuesta de los Ciegos lead to Las Vistillas, a site both, vital and sentimental in Jonás Trueba’s films and which has a structural as well as an emotional role in La reconquista. The first part opens up and closes with Olmo and Manuela first meeting and subsequently separating at an older age. That’s where they kiss and walk around and where the film comes to an end. The photographs show Jonás Trueba and Lorena Tudela, the director’s assistant, exploring the possible paths the characters may choose to walk along the rambling steps.
EXT. BRIDGE. DUSK.
In a clumsy, hesitant way, they catch up with each other. She suggests to attend her father’s concert.
Jonás Trueba and Miguel Ángel Rebollo look for first-floor venues with views over the city: La Mallorquina patisserie and the large windows of Aryson, also in Puerta del Sol. They finally choose a Chinese restaurant in Plaza del Ángel with its blue awning and views to the square.
EXT. MEETING POINT. DAWN.
Olmo returns to the early meeting place and gets on his bike.
Olmo’s memorable motorbike ride at dawn with the early morning light already present in the very first version of the script, with photos and images registered in internet. In the document Visual Memory of an oral script with clues towards its filming, Jonás Trueba and Miguel Ángel Rebollo already included the shooting of that ride with a little camera.
Jonás Trueba and Miguel Ángel Rebollo, in charge of the art department, share many of these wandering walks. Herewith a 10-pp precious document which allows to preview the film on location.
Along with the images, Trueba takes notes concomitant to the script being written: small annotations hinting what the film might turn out to be. It could be said that it’s a first visual script of the film, prior to the written one and to the Visual Memory of an oral script with clues towards its filming.
EXT. BRIDGE. DUSK.
Aiming for a bar, not knowing …
In the end the Segovia Viaduct won’t feature in La reconquista, however Jonás Trueba will resort to show it in La Virgen de Agosto (2019), where it’ll play a major role in Eva’s path.
INT. SALA CONCERT HALL.NIGHT.
Berrio’s concert
It’s a bar where Olmo and Manuela will attend Rafael Berrio’s concert. He’s Manuela’s father in the fiction. She too will play a gentle version of Dom La Nena’s “Buenos Aires”.
INT. HOUSE. DAWN.
Olmo walks in. He might get very close to her. Perhaps in the morning they’ll talk about furnishing the house or about the previous evening. They might not go out or perhaps they’ll turn up for the last day of the exhibition she liked so much.
The film shows the house as a white space (with the door frame separating the sitting room and the bedroom as the only feature), with soft background colours and showing only some packed objects from the moving. Filmed with a few delicate fix frames. The Visual Memory serves as a guideline to follow the composition of the space.
Film frames corresponding to sequences
