I have always sincerely felt there is nothing more dramatic in life than a lie. Despite the negative connotation the masses associate with lies, many people make lying a regular part of their everyday lives. My thinking about portraying this anomaly on film brought me to question how to combine the inner drama of a lie as well as the coldness of the people involved in those same lies. How do I display two couples, representing different generations, who are so used to lies and deceit that there is no more dramatic tension focusing on the negativity but rather an acceptance of their own false and hypocritical realities? How do I exhibit a cold universe where love itself is both a warm feeling and yet just another form of lying? Those questions are, in essence, how "2x2" was born: as an open criticism of a society driven by self-interest and immediate self-gratification. People often lie so much that lying itself becomes their very own way of life; a way of getting through their days and nights, small bits of stimulation to see if they’re able to feel something every now and then.
The four characters in the film are caught in a vicious circle that brings them all to the same destination: unified dissatisfaction. It is not only about love and sex: it is about moral victories and pride, lots of pride. The only thing they have in common is, for the most part, their unanimous desire to escape from the redundancy in life that is causing them a great deal of unhappiness. And yet still, they are merely stuck in this cycle because, one way or the other, they have become addicted to the situation as it is.
As "2x2" simply shows what some people’s reality is all about, I needed to arrive at the most realistic depiction possible in each field of cinematography. To start with, I needed performances in line with naturalism: that step beyond realism that would give the feeling that this story could be happening to any of us at anytime. To achieve that, I needed people who could work as they do on the stage: experiencing the life in every single moment as it comes; people able to carry on the true energy of those moments in their entirety in ordert to truly capture on my digital negative the genuine life and reality of the situations contained within the original script. The four actors (Rocío Cebrero, Gloria León, Fernando Jiménez y Arturo Vargas) gave me exactly what I was hoping for: doubtless truth on every single frame. Working with theatre actors, admittedly, entailed a great deal of challenge but I knew that if I really wanted to harness that special magic that the stage has, that palpability of the sensations the mediation of a screen always prevents us from, I had to give them exactly what they needed: freedom. I outlined a different form of shooting from what I was used to: I would not plan every single step of the filmmaking process (aside from to what the performing was related). My call was therefore to shoot, in spite of whatever I had planned for the edit, the sequences from beginning to end, never calling for a cut regardless of the accuracy of what I was seeing on my monitor. I knew shooting scenes in this fashion would be more exhausting for the actors, but choosing theatre actors meant that they already had the endurance needed for full scenes.
In order to make the most of the editing, the camera used to shoot "2x2" had a special assignment. First, it had to be much more voyeuristic than typically found in movies, almost as if it was through the eyes of a fifth character we never meet. And, for theatre actors, the presence of the camera could hinder their performances, especially the naturalism I sought after. Therefore, not only the truth and beauty of light that Salvador Blanco achieved for this production, but also his work as a silent, almost invisible spy who meddles in the most intimate moments of the lives of two cheating couples, makes this an absolutely perfect directing decision in my humblest opinion. It was decided to shoot all of the sequences with a 50 millimeters lens to be able to capture the truth with no image distortion whatsoever, keeping it as real as possible.
None of this extreme truth would have been possible without the decisive collaboration of the art director, Sara Santos, who created (with the tiniest of the budgets) the perfect atmospheres in which this film could be developed. I was awestruck with the sets Sara had created and how perfectly she had read the images in my mind. Adrián’s dorm and Esther’s house were exactly as I imagined. And the way she converted an industrial unit into Felipe’s office was simply perfect. Sara’s care for the minutest details was the key to making the actors feel as if they were in their very own element which, in turn, created the definitively stainless atmosphere that this short needed to pull the audience into the cruel universe of "2x2".
And as the shooting process was full of liberty and spontaneity, I knew I would face a huge challenge editing this film. Essentially, I found myself with quite a few long sequences that I had to put together. Sequences in which actors without film experience were able to act with full gesture continuity. I spent long weeks in front of my computer trying to get the best of the photographic work while still respecting all such continuity. It was a rough road… but it was worth it in the result. In narrative terms, though it would mean not being able to keep the final pro-duct completely natural, I preferred to break the time continuity, offering a parallel between the stories of both couples: how each of them go on, continuing to sink until they both end in a well of bitterness, only with different consequences.
The proverbial cherry was put on top of this short by Juan Carlos Moya who, besides providing the intimate sound design I was hoping to hear in this movie, provided it with an original soundtrack that appeals to a truly emotional nature that every drama aims to achieve. By doing so, the movie ends by means of the perfect crowning jewel.
"2x2" is not only the best movie I’ve ever made, but also has the best context within which I have ever worked and I owe it all to the hard working group of individuals who trusted me and my project…and who got together to carry it along so successfully.
.- Ibai Fernández
