“And so we named the project accordingly and kept rolling with it” say not everything has to work out directing duo
Change was important for the characters and directors to flourish
Jason Pchajek, staff writer
Sometimes titles mask a film, other times they tell you exactly what you need to know before the thing even begins.
Not everything has to work out falls into the second category.
Directing duo Carmin Aisen and Franco Albertti turned out a masterful film, as the Argentinian production perfectly handles its subject matter for an impactful and insightful experience.
For their hard work and success, the pair have been nominated for Most Promising International Filmmaker at the 2020 UWPG Film Festival.
At the heart of the film is the idea of familial bonds, particularly that of fathers and daughters, as Malena, a famous self-help author played wonderfully by Natalia D’Alena, must navigate her own personal struggles while caring for her father Ruben.
D’Alena acts opposite Juan Carrasco, who turns in a superb performance as Ruben, a man who simply wants to be his best for his daughter, despite his own pain and hardship.
For Aisen and Albertti that familial bond was central to the film, and “how those bonds shape you and leave a mark, for better or worse.” But they also had a more artistic aim.
“When writing this story, we wanted to show a broken relationship and also play with the boundaries between drama and comedy, and the most interesting way we found to put those things together was to have a dramatic protagonist at the center of the story, living in a comedy world, with comedy toned characters all around her,” they said.
“We wanted to see that contrast, to make it feel palpable, and to see where that took us. It was kind of an experiment that was intriguing enough for us to try.
“We also wanted to put the spotlight on the difference between what people show on the outside and what they really are inside. We want viewers to see that very clearly. But at the same time, we believe that each viewer should make out of this whatever interpretation of meaning they find or need in their life. “
Many of the films viewers will see at the 2020 UWPG Film Festival deal with similar themes. Family, parenthood, the dynamics of children and parents, will all be felt, and for Aisen and Albertti, “we are pretty sure that we are not the only ones who had communication issues with their parents.”
“Every relationship has several sides to it,” they said.
“To simplify: there are negative memories or avoided/hidden situations, but there are also good things, the shared memories.
“In this relationship, we wanted to portray how sometimes, by hiding or avoiding these negative situations, one could easily be forgetting all the positive. When this relationship is finally exposed raw, you can see a glimpse of a possible reconciliation that prior to it looked impossible.”
It is this fact which makes the film’s title – Not everything has to work out – all the more apt, as Malena must come to grips with the fact her own life failures do not define her worth, and that sometimes recognizing the negative is necessary to grow past them.
In the age of COVID-19, where people feel evermore isolated, and young people feel more pressure and anxiety about their personal futures and potential failings, the film and its title could speak volumes.
For the directors, while the film was made a year before the pandemic was on anyone’s radar, the message people can get from it remains clear.
“Close to the end of the film, Malena makes a rant about mass media and the way they portray things,” they said.
“We believe that today more than ever, in this particular context of isolation, social networks such as Instagram took the place of classic mass media. And the contrast between the image that one shows as a mask on these platforms and the conflicts they each go through in real life is getting so much bigger.
“Lots of young people (us included) spend lots of time, expectations, desires on these platforms, and we’re exposed to these images, these masks, interpretations of reality that aren’t real at all. Ruben is not a character that you would show on Instagram, and Malena – living the image-dependent life that she created – doesn’t want to show him to the world, but, for better or worse, he’s part of her reality.
“That final ‘reconciliation’ at the side of the pool with him, with this part of herself that she wanted to hide, is something that we think young people should take with them.”
The title also took on a very literal meaning for the directors during production.
“Curiously enough, and as cheesy as it sounds, what we learned is that not everything has to work out,” they said.
“When we were writing and designing this short film, our teacher kept repeating to us that this idea ‘didn’t work’. At university – this was our experience, at least – we were taught to create and to write in a particular way, in a particular order, following a particular set of structural rules for the films ‘to work’.
“After years of following this way of creation, we realized that we were not that interested in our projects ‘to work out’ that particular way. Our idea was to portray a relationship with all the complexities that come with it, and to follow our instinct in doing so.
“And so we named the project accordingly and kept rolling with it.”
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