Movie explores female need for spiritual independence
Lucia Casan Rodriguez
Spanish film 'A Bathroom of One's Own' will debut at the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival and vie for the top honor.
In the film, Antonia, an exemplary 65-year-old housewife, has a strange secret: She is obsessed with bathrooms, the only place where she can say "busy" and people leave her alone.
It is there that she gives free rein to her true vocation, that of a writer, and escapes from her monotonous life.
According to the director Lucia Casan Rodriguez, what she had discussed together with the heroine Nuria Gonzalez, is about whether they can find a private space in a house that belongs to women.
"A family may have a study, but it often belongs to men," said Rodriguez. "Then I thought of the bathroom, which is a very good carrier for the film. There we women can be alone and have our creations."
She said that she hopes to express that within a confined space, the woman can transcend the limitations of this space and experience a sense of self-liberation, which is a form of spiritual independence.
In the movie, there are two worlds for Antonia: One is the real world where she lives, while the other is how she perceives her inner world.
During this process, she strongly desires to step from the real world into his inner world to create and become the person he wants to be, Rodriguez said.
However, sometimes as a woman, when she spends a long time alone, she feels lonely.
She then needs to return to the original family life and atmosphere. But at this point, her family already sees her as a strange person, treating her as if she were a foreigner.
So, on a spiritual level, she wants to pursue self-fulfillment but also hopes for recognition from the real world in which she exists.
She revealed that her next movie is still a film with a female theme, mainly a motivational film about young women.
"The protagonist is a 25-year-old young woman," she said. "It's a film that tells the story through three generations: the grandmother, the mother, and this young woman, focusing on a female theme."
