Pablo Berger: “With My Robot Friend, I lived a waking dream! »
The director of Blancanieves makes his first animated film with this love story as joyful as it is heartbreaking between a dog and a robot in New York in the 80’s. Encounter.
What made you want to venture into the field of animation for the first time?
Pablo Berger: Everything really starts from the discovery of Robot dreams, the graphic novel by Sara Varon. I came across it in 2010, three years after its publication and I immediately loved the graphic style, the characters, the humor in this story of friendship with twists and turns between a dog and a robot. that he ordered to break with his solitude. I then realized Blancanieves And Abracadabra but when I started thinking about what my fourth feature could be, I dove back into this graphic novel. And I was hooked again. Even more than the first reading! When I closed it, I was not moved but totally overwhelmed. This is what definitely made me decide to embark on this great adventure that is animation. And I was obviously very lucky that producers in Spain and France followed me. Because the process is necessarily very long. It took five years!
With Blancanieves, you took on the tale of Snow White in a silent and black and white film. And, again here, My robot friend entirely without dialogue. We imagine that it is anything but a coincidence…
The period of cinema that fascinates me the most is really the 1920s. For me it represents the golden age of cinema with incredible visual poetry. If I launched into Blancanieves, it’s also because I felt that the poetry of this period was a little forgotten. I wanted to highlight it again. And the exceptional response from the public proved to me that I was not wrong. For me, cinema is a sensory experience, not a cerebral one. Going to the cinema is like daydreaming. We travel in time, in space. And what really matters to me is the image. I write in images so I can happily do without dialogue. My robot friend therefore followed the same logic.
You also like to sprinkle your films with nods to other films – in this case in My robot friendby Pierre Etaix Wizard of Oz – but without this encroaching on your story. How do you manage to maintain this balance?
Before being a director, I am a spectator. I would even say that I prefer seeing cinema to making it. Because doing it is exhausting! (laughs) I live through the films that I see and it is therefore natural that my cinema is nourished by that of others. But I am careful that these homages never take precedence over the story. They simply constitute additional layers but without it being annoying if you miss them. Take the poster of Yo-yo which is in the apartment of Dog, the hero of my film. If you know and like Pierre Etaix, this will make you smile. But if you don’t know it, you will only see a poster with a smiling clown and that will not hinder your understanding of the character or the plot. I really imagined My robot friend as a film for everyone, for young and old, for cinephiles or philistines. I hate compartmentalizing things, I have no collective mind. I want to talk to everyone!
MY ROBOT FRIEND: THE EMOTIONAL FIREWORKS OF THE END OF 2023 (CRITICAL)
Why did you set the action in New York in 1982 when the graphic novel did not specify a precise place or time?
I lived for ten years in New York where I took a master’s degree in directing at the Tisch School of the Arts. And Dog’s apartment is an exact replica of the last apartment I lived in. What we see through the window is what I saw. My robot friend is also my love letter to New York and everything I experienced there. I wanted to dive back into this New York of the 80s and 90s which no longer exists. Pre-globalization. Pre-internet. In this East Village neighborhood where many of us artists lived, went to the same bars, attended the same concerts, which encouraged collaborations. Whereas today, everything pushes us to live each at home. With My robot friend, I wanted to resurrect that New York and the varied music that I heard in the street as soon as I left my house: from Cuban tunes to punk rock to hip hop. With the icing on the cake, September of the truly flagship group of funky disco of those years, Earth wind and fire. It begins with “Do you remember 21st night of September?” “. What could be better to symbolize the journey through time and space that offers My robot friend ?
What did you find most complex in this first adventure in the field of animation?
Set up and manage two animation studios, one in Madrid and the other in Pamplona, with around a hundred people to manage. But I will say that the most exciting thing, for my artistic director Jose Luis Agreda and me, was also… working with them for more than two years. I’m not an animation technician or expert, so I talked to these animators like I talk to actors. And they knew how to translate my words into images and allowed me to do things I had never done before. As if all my previous films had been a preparation for what I discovered there. In My robot friendI was able to shoot a scene from a musical comedy à la Busby Berkeley or even a sleigh race à la James Bond or à la Ben-Hur…I could never have done that in a live-action film. With My robot friendI lived a waking dream!
My robot friend. By Pablo Berger. Duration: 1h51. Released December 27, 2023.
