A Different "Elvis & Madona" Hits the Fest Circuit

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 02 July 2010 00:32

Written by Brad Balfour

Among the films seen during the 8th Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil in June -- and earlier at the Tribeca Film Fest -- was Elvis & Madona, an off-beat, low-budget, sort-of-romantic comedy that's timely in a special way. Like the recent GayPride celebrations and the-soon-to-be-released The Kids Are All Right, it envisions an alternative family set up, Brazilian style. Enhanced by a serious social message, with a lathering of soap (think telenovela rather than Almodovar), Elvis & Madona is more than a broad domestic rom-com.

Though promoted as a comedy with its share of quirks, the film, starring Igor Cotrim and Simone Spoladore, stirred controversial reactions from some members of the gay and lesbian crowd and garnered a few critical razzes as well.

Written and directed by straight director Marcelo Laffitte, the film lightheartedly posits an enduring romance between a transvestite-maybe-transsexual hairdresser and his young bi-sexual lover who gets knocked up -- and shacks up -- while struggling with his entertainment career. Success would mean an end to their financial troubles and the start of a functional family.

Set in the vibrant Copacabana district of Rio de Janiero, Elvis and Madona's unlikely love help them chase dreams, face down the obstacles that arise along the way and fulfill Madona's plans for a spectacular drag show that redeems everyone.

At audience Q&As, the film prompted a mix of contention and praise for its unique sexual stance. Though Laffitte was bothered that so many descriptions of the movie presented Madona as a drag performer, he pointed out that Brazilians would consider Madona a transvestite, not a drag queen -- though it wasn't clear if the director would distinguish between transvestite and trannie.

Through the haze of a terrible interpreter and some prickly journalists, Laffitte tried to set the record during a small roundtable held in May.

Q: So what prompted you to make this as your first feature film?

ML: This film had been [brewing] in me for a long time. I came out of doing documentaries; I even used to be the president of the Association of Documentary Filmmakers, but I also did four shorts before Elvis & Madona. Though my name is so strongly associated with being a documentary filmmaker, for seven years I have been doing fiction films. I did the four fiction shorts because I thought it was important before I did this feature film because all the learning I acquired.

Q: But why this theme?

ML: I wrote the script for Elvis & Madona a long time ago, in 2001, when I did my first short film. That’s when it came to me. I had been to a show with a transvestite and there was this story about a transvestite that had left his hometown as a man and years later comes back and he's a [drag queen]. His father had remarried and he falls in love with the daughter of his father's new wife and he’s madly in love. That's how I [got the idea] for Elvis & Madona back then.

At first, my idea was to get a real transvestite/transsexual to do this, but then it was like where is the right one? I was searching and it was in the air but 10 days before the date when I had to have someone cast as Madona I was introduced to Igor [Cotrim] by a common friend, and there you go.

Q: The chemistry between Elvis and Madona is the whole fabric of the film. Was the audition process complicated?

ML: It was of no use to find the ideal Elvis or ideal Madona if there was no chemistry between them. At the end of the day, it had to be Elvis and Madona. They go together.

Q: So this has been a long process?

ML: It's taken 10 years to make this movie. This is a movie of a lot of struggle and making dreams come true. And in a way, the film also talks about this: people trying to find and realize their dream.

Q: So whom is this movie made for? Is it for heterosexuals to enjoy lifestyles of people they may not understand?

ML: It's [trying to] reach for this social inclusion. And yes, there is this tendency in society to look at this issue and bring about the need for the social inclusion.

Q: Though many people feel they're born a homosexual or a lesbian, it does not mean that they're incapable of having sex with the opposite sex, and yet your comedy is about how that can happen. But in the eyes of some viewers, it could be seen as though you're saying, "Oh, they just have to find the right opposite sex person to balance them out."

ML: My gay and lesbian friends in Brazil love the movie because they feel that it shows it as normal. The way it’s treated, the way it’s shown, it’s like everything is normal. Not only in Brazil, in Melbourne too, where the film has been seen, the gay and lesbian communities, and friends, they all liked it because they like how the normality, how the issue is approached. But in Sao Paulo, one lesbian came to say, "You are homophobic! Because at the end of the day what you’re saying is that a man can only be happy with a woman."

Q: You were confronted by someone who is offended by the film, she's making a serious critique. Without sloughing it off, how do you as an artist and filmmaker -- trying to do something serious in this movie -- reflect upon that kind of criticism?

ML: Maybe this person didn't really get the idea of the film. Or maybe even she didn’t even get the idea of herself. If 99 percent of the people got it or enjoyed it and 1 percent was offended and hurt by it, there's something being said right there.

The one thing that is the mission of this film, and my mission as an artist who created it, is that it's bringing about the debate, the issue to be approached. My mission as an artist is not to create the truth, a truth that he doesn’t even have himself, but just being able to bring the issues up to the discussion table and have people face it.

Obviously Madona's tale is like a fable, that maybe in real life you’re not going to find a story like this, but maybe there will be a story like it. So it's like a reference.

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