Alfonso Cuarón was reflective but playful this afternoon as he headlined the latest session in the Locarno Film Festival’s popular masterclass series.
The discussion was mostly geared to discuss Cuarón’s origins and most successful projects, all of which he has discussed at length many times before. The four-time Oscar winner did, however, give some insight into projects he has yet to get off the ground.
“My aspiration is to one day do a horror film,” he told the packed crowd at the stylish outdoor Spazio Cinema in Locarno.
“I love Rosemary’s Baby, and the other Polanski films, and films like The Babadook. They’re so grounded in reality and in character so I love those,” he said. “As a spectator, I have a wider taste but anything I feel I could do would need to be more grounded. I’ve been trying to write something like that, but somehow, it doesn’t fully work.”
The one genre film Cuarón did manage to launch successfully which went on to bring him commercial success was 2013’s Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Cuarón said the multi-Oscar-winning project was one of the films that “came to save my life” during a dark time.
“After Children of Men, which was a complete commercial flop, the appetite to work with me plummeted,” he said. “So I started writing and developing a film with my son. I started prepping and the cast featured Charlotte Gainsbourg and Guillaume Canet. It was about a road trip from the South of France to the north of Scotland. It was very difficult to finance and the film fell apart. At the same time, I was going through the worst times in my personal life.”
Cuarón said he was “completely out of money” and told his collaborators that he needed to “write something but no arty shit.” He needed a screenplay “that would let a studio give me a cheque.”
“That same evening we came up with the outline of gravity,” he said.
After knocking out a workable screenplay with his son, Jonás, Cuarón said Warner Bros. bought in but said they wouldn’t give him much money. He accepted and took the screenplay to his longtime collaborator, DoP Emmanuel Lubezki.
At that point, he said, they realized there hadn’t been enough technological advancements in the film industry to support an ambitious project like Gravity.
“Fincher told us to forget about it, there’s no tech, wait 6 years. And he wasn’t wrong. James Cameron told us how we could do it but that was a 400 million dollar film. We told him only you can do that. And he said yeah you’re right. So we developed our own way.”
Cuarón and Lubezki’s “own way” included a mix of animation work and live-action camera work that utilized Industrial Light & Magic’s LED-based StageCraft technology known as The Volume.
“We developed the film over three or four years technologically,” he said. “Thank God we had an Exec who was very geeky.”
Cuarón’s troubles with Gravity didn’t stop there. He told the Locarno audience that Warner Bros. was adamant about testing the film with audiences, despite his reservations. The film’s complex VFX work had yet to be completed. As Cuarón expected, the film tested poorly, with audiences slamming the visuals. Cuarón said the studio subsequently began to cool on the project and it was only “thanks to film festivals” that the project became a commercial success.
“It opened at Venice and the reception was amazing,” he said. “That’s when the studio started to love it.”
As part of his trip to Locarno, Cuarón will also receive the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The ceremony will take place this evening at the festival’s famous Piazza Grande cinema after the filmmaker presents a screening of Alain Tanner’s Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l’an 2000 (Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000, 1976)
Cuarón will continue on the European festival circuit later this month as he once again heads to Venice to screen his latest work Disclaimer, a seven episode limited series for Apple TV+, starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline. The limited series will make its global debut on October 11 with the first two episodes followed by new episodes every Friday through November 15.
Written and directed by Cuarón, Disclaimer is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Renée Knight and follows journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchett), who built her reputation revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others. When she receives a novel from an unknown author, she is horrified to realize she is now the main character in a story that exposes her darkest secrets.
The Locarno Film Festival runs until August 17.
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