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DF Magazine
November 2004 Diego Luna reappears with Criminal, a movie where he shares the leading role with John C. Reilly, and plays a Mexican stereotype. But the young man has two faces, like his personality, both appear in the following interview.
SIDE A But attention, girls: do not believe that envy speaks again if I say that as I sat at the breakfast table, Diego Luna is not so handsome, like his friend Gael, neither ugly and sexy like, for example, Luis Felipe Tovar. His is a disheveled elegance, an authentic slovenliness and outside pose, the type of guy that woman would not like to go to bed with, but – especially – wake up with. Diego seems like any young guy, and the joke of the matter is that he evidently is not. This natural skill for the lie would be able to be the starting point of his unequivocal glamour, an absent brightness in more of a lady’s man and that would give Mexican actresses reason to vote him as “the one with the most (film) rolls” of all actors or leading men of the way. Nevertheless, he, so modest, prefers to discredit the praises of his feminine colleagues. “It is not worth reading what they say about one, to surround oneself with flattering people, because good or bad, you can believe in yourself,” he counts, though his accomplice smile looks that he thinks the opposite: “I read two or three critiques that matter to me, and nothing more. I try to think is that this is only work, a work in which I am the privileged because I can live doing cinema. To have these things very clear, and professional priorities, allows me to enjoy this and leaves collaborating everything easier.
I was thinking that you
were going to say that you are privileged because you kissed Maribel
Verdu. Who kisses better, Maribel or Gael? If Gael turned out
to be the worst kiss, which was the best? Mystery. Silence. Diego Luna is delighted nobody knows much of his private life, and the truth is that he finds it hard to understand such sentimental sensationalism failure. “Sometimes I read that one or another girlfriend put it to me (snubbed me), and I am entertained to know that they are wrong, or slowed down with the news - he says, with irony; and I think would it not be better that these gossip magazines speak about important things, for example, the quality of a Mexican movie like Period of Ducks.” Meanwhile I listen to him, the green monster of envy returns to the attack and I am inoculated by a doubt that catches me in the heart: who wants to deceive Diego Luna? He seriously believes the gossip magazines will leave everything to devote themselves to something else? Meanwhile for a moment I fall in love again with the gelatinous reptile, Diego gives up to a monologue and, as in his best movies, he seduces and convinces by force of sincerity. He makes clear that only for pleasure (only in vain) he co-produced Carlos Bolado's last work, he remembers he had problems paying his rent when he decided to leave television (“it was a terrible time, TV was killing me, I believe that I was kept ‘in a comma’ thanks to doing theater”) and he indicates that although he can live on cinema, he does not live making Mexican cinema, as he would like. “Y tu mamá también has been the most pleasant experience I have had because I managed to believe in myself again as actor - he concludes - and things like that are what give me hope.” But, how are you
going to have hope, if you are a young guy? Probably, Diego Luna's delight is not any greater than his ambition for interpreting good guys. In times not especially propitious for reliable people, to turn into someone like that is something so strange that it even serves to please and to seduce. “Surely from the outside it seems that everything I say is yes, because I go out everywhere – he says -; the problem is people do not find out about everything one pushes back. I tell you that not working with the director who I don’t admire. Or repeating certain formulas have already proved success in Mexican cinema. Of everything I have done, there are things that I would not do again, but something that I would not do is be employed in cinema only for money. To earn money one can do TV/radio commercials, act in TV, open a restaurant or organize a garage sale; this work needs conviction, to believe the story that you tell, and you do not obtain it if you give more importance to money.” Then, I remain with desire to ask him how it is obtained. I prefer thinking that he said it earlier: having hope, being a good guy, turning into someone who people can trust. SIDE B As soon as the
trauma of the soap operas were overcome, Diego seems to be extremely
filled with enthusiasm by this new film project, and the only tone
of voice that he uses to speak about himself denotes satisfaction. Diego, the star (because he is), sounds sincere, and probably in this set phrase he implies the fact that he has always been a difficult (risky) actor with his industry and with a way of doing cinema that often borders on poverty. In effect, to do cinema in Mexico is a luxury and a miracle, but in the U.S. cinema is a millionaire industry that needs to film incessantly to give satisfaction to many markets. Hey, but it must not
be the same to do an independent movie in Mexico than in the U.S.,
yes? Diego speaks and
having done it, does not lose certain innocence and juvenile
candor. He sounds like a normal guy chatting to his school
assembly. Nevertheless it is necessary to remember that the one who
speaks is a professional who refers to his experience in both worlds
of the cinema industry. His experience is first hand, and as for
Hollywood he ends up, nothing more, working under the order of
Steven Spielberg, in The Terminal, or in Dirty Dancing 2:
Havana Nights. About the second one, it is known that it was a
problematic production that required multiple re-shoots and whose
making was meticulously supervised by the executives of the
production company. The same Diego, though discreet, refers to this
one as an infernal (dreadful) shooting. But he prefers not speaking
about it. Categorically he affirms that "he wanted to make pure independent films, and understand by independent that the decisions are made by a single person: the director. The one of Spielberg is equally independent, or Criminal, that they are films in where the directors alone decide what they want to do and you help to tell his story already. This is what I want to do, to work with directors that work alone and are cool guys.” All that serves as pretext to return to Criminal, the director's project, really, but behind which there are personalities as Steven Soderbergh y George Clooney. You were never sorry
that they had too much interference with this premium opera? Paradoxically, Jacobs, assistant to Soderbergh in Ocean’s Eleven, makes his debut as the director with a movie in the same reference, and it is unavoidable, as well all the critics of Criminal confirm it, as the comparison to Nine Queens, the Argentinean film by Fabián Bielinsky from which the plot was taken. Better said, Criminal is an accurate remake (lease copy) of that one, although he had to modify his character of the emblematic film about the Argentine economic crisis to move the story to a Los Angeles in where they weigh the topics of corruption and the trick more. However, there is now a new element, and it’s that of the ethnic diversity of the city. It is by which Diego is transformed into a young delinquent of Mexican origin, but not the typical cliché of the hooligan, but in a nice swindler, well presented, of good manners, go, even reliable. Was it really that
difficult to find a North American script with a positive Mexican
character? On the question of the remake, Diego concludes the conversation clarifying that “the ideal thing would be not to have seen the original one because then you enjoy this one more. My dad saw it without having seen the first one and enjoyed it very much. It reassured me, because he is my hardest critic, and he liked this work.”
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