When Anna Alarcón was eight years old, a psychiatrist ordered her isolation in the pediatric ward of the Barcelona hospital where she was admitted for anorexia nervosa. “I refused to eat a plate of sausages and tomato. He went crazy and told me: ‘That’s it, I’m taking away your visits and contact with the family.’ The technician came and unscrewed the telephone and the television. When I was left incommunicado, my parents, desperate, looked for André.” André was André Malby, a media shaman, a regular on radio and television in the mid-eighties, known to Dalí, Umbral and the Bosé, collaborator of The world by monteraby Fernando Sánchez Dragó. “My parents contacted him through a mutual friend. Malby asked for a photo of me, he prepared some powder that I later secretly ingested in the hospital and three days later I began to eat normally, as if nothing had happened,” this Barcelona actress recalls about the episode she suffered as a child.
Experienced in the theater – she debuted with Rosa Maria Sardà at 17 – and regular on the screen combining independent phenomena or for the general public such as The new years, They know that one, mammal, have breakfast with me, Puberty o JakartaAt 47 years old, Alarcón has put fiction aside to inspect that unresolved wound from his childhood. He does it in Supernatural, a fascinating documentary directed by Ventura Vall that premiered a few weeks ago and where the performer faces her beliefs to search for the meaning of magic with Marthurin, the son of André Malby, a highly rational being who never believed in what his father did.
Ask. Why do you explain your story now?
Answer. Ventura Durall, the director and producer, is a good friend. He knew that I had written about what happened to me and he wanted to make a documentary about Malby. When I said yes, I put myself in the hands of a very skeptical person, who looked at me with eyes that did not quite validate my story. That seemed much more interesting to me than working with someone who validated everything for me.
P. Does it bother you what they will say?
R. I was afraid of coming off as an ethereal person or without critical ability, but I think Ventura has achieved something very difficult: a balance between the tensions of opposing positions, while being very respectful of privacy. We are talking about wounds, reconciliation, spirituality, magic, esotericism, reasoning and science. They are very delicate topics.
P. Supernatural He explains that Malby abandoned his sick wife and was a bad father. Do you still admire him the same?
R. I have concretized the figure of Malby, which I had in a magical place in my head. Let’s say it has now landed. But, above all, the documentary has helped me address pending conversations with my family. In the end, we said to ourselves: “There are no culprits. We have all suffered.” We have been able to place the pieces.
P. In the footage she drinks ayahuasca to look at her photo as a girl for hours. What do you think of the upsurge in spirituality that we are experiencing at a cultural level?
R. The world of technology has left us a void. We are increasingly depressed and isolated. We have understood that the wheel of capitalism does not fill us. Inevitably, there is a search. But to connect with this part that we have forgotten, we must know how to stop and leave space for emptiness and silence. One does not connect with oneself or resolve one’s spirituality in a retreat detox three days or listening to a Rosalía album.
P. You don’t have WhatsApp and your Instagram is managed by someone else, can you get papers like that?
R. It just doesn’t feel good to me to have them. I have the feeling that there is too much noise and what I try to do is empty myself of it. My representative, Esther Cabrero, has never pushed me with that. If you’re going to look for the pretty actress with millions of followers, that’s not me.
P. Isn’t it a privilege to not have those apps installed?
R. In the union it is very difficult to find a space. In the end it’s all about families and meeting people. I didn’t come from a cultural family, my parents own a furniture and rug store. There are many people who do not know how to access it, but right now there is a lot of audiovisual work, we are in a good moment.
P. You have combined many projects in the last three years, how is it going?
R. We live in a very fast-paced time and I am one of those who thinks that haste kills. I don’t believe in speed, I’m one of those who meet a thousand times with the director or a fellow actor to talk about the project. I continue to believe that little by little you find the layers and you go further. That’s why it surprises me how much it costs for a series or a movie to penetrate society. They are projects that have taken years to see the light of day and then they come out, we talk about them for a while and move on to the next thing. I have the feeling that people forget everything very quickly.
P. There is greater audiovisual production but are they worse projects?
R. More than parameters measurable by AI, which greatly influences decision making right now, I invite the mainstream to have a look at what is really happening at a social level. That’s why I think it’s very important what Leticia Dolera has done with Pubertybreaking a lot of stones for years, or what Diego San José did with Jakarta. We have to continue giving space to great creators in that mainstream. In October I will start filming Climateriumthe new film by Liliana Torres, which will be very atmospheric and will deal with menopause from a very animal perspective. It’s very exciting when things like that happen.
P. How do you feel now that the documentary has seen the light and with it its story?
R. Calmer. In the end, this was about accepting and reconciling. It seems easy, but it takes time to achieve it.
P. Do you think Malby’s son has also come to terms with his own history?
R. He has left his home in New Hampshire and has come to live in Barcelona with his wife and son. He himself told me: “I had to make a documentary to capture these kilometers of ocean that I had in my way.” I guess he’s calmed down his life too. This documentary has been an act of transformation.
