Turin, November 22 (askanews) – In Turin, besides Spike Lee, it was also Antonio Banderas’ day who was awarded the Mole Star at the opening ceremony of the 43rd Turin Film Festival.
All the spotlight was on the actor who took photos and autographs before presenting to the public “Pain and Glory”, a film by Pedro Almodovar with which he won the best male performance award at Cannes in 2019.
Banderas spoke about how important Pedro Almodòvar was to his career; the two worked together in films such as “Labyrinth of Passions”, “Matador”, “The Law of Desire”, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”. “Almodovar was instrumental in my career – he said – I don’t know if he influenced the way I act, but I think I have understood and read it: he demands, he asks a lot of you, you have to be the best and if you are not like that, you will lose yourself. I learned that with him you have to create a character from scratch, I tried to accept his narrative and let him shape me, you have to be smart and humble, let him do it. Sometimes it hurts but that’s what creation is.”
And speaking about “Dolor y Gloria,” he explains that it is the strangest film ever made with its director. “It was a special shoot, different from anything done before, I had had a heart attack two years before, it changed my life, but the film was again directed by Almodovar, a strange film, because I was his alter ego. I worked on the sensation, I felt he was telling a part of his life, his relationship with his mother, with the cinema, with his body full of disease and pain, his efforts to live. It was difficult, as if they had removed my skin and I was another person. I have seen it again, maybe I will tonight, I have never watched some my film.”
