Interview: Martín Mauregui describes the importance of pain and pleasure in ‘Crazy Old Lady’
Filmmaker Martín Mauregui discusses his latest film.
The legendary Carmen Maura delivers a performance in Vieja Loca (or Crazy Old Lady) that lands in the ballpark of Kathy Bates in Misery. Maura’s intricate turn as Alicia, an elderly woman stricken with dementia, is textured with world-weary wisdom about the complexity of the human experience. She walks a fine line between sweet and psychotic with the precision of a needlepoint. In both Misery and Vieja Loca, the villain possesses a distorted view of the world and struggles with a moral dilemma of right and wrong to the end. Admittedly, writer/director Martín Mauregui doesn’t “want to be compared to ‘Misery.’ It’s a great film,” he laughs over a recent Zoom call.
Vieja Loca follows an older woman slowly losing her mind. When her daughter Laura (Agustina Liendo) asks her ex-husband to check up on her, things spiral out in vicious and disturbing ways. What Mauregui brings out on paper is a complicated woman plagued with Lewy Body Dementia, “a type of dementia that is constantly changing, and it’s not only about forgetting things,” he says. “I wanted the audience to go along with her transformation of being in the past and being able to enjoy again.” When writing Alicia, it was all about “empathy,” he says, frequently bringing up that word in our conversation. The film, now streaming on Shudder, unearths the deepest recesses of the subconscious – the very real horror of dementia and what that means for loved ones. “You want Alicia to win. You desire good things for her,” he adds.
Thematically, Mauregui explores the push and pull of pain vs pleasure through Alicia’s brutal torture of Pedro (Daniel Hendler), her ex-son-in-law. Alicia constantly oscillates between present reality and a reality of yesteryear, when she was a serial killer with an abusive man, known only as César. In one particularly vile scene, Alicia sexually assaults Pedro, a layered sequence that requires a nuanced conversation. “In the past, she was a victim. She had that same pain and pleasure. But in this new situation, she was the one who wanted to submit or have power over the other person,” explains Mauregui. “It was like looking for that relationship between the two, but in that scene, she wasn’t looking for [Pedro’s] pain.”
He continues, “She didn’t see the violence, but it was more of a couple who like strong sex. She was recreating that from a romantic point of view – not trying to focus too much on his pain, even though he was screaming. It was about Alicia, not only supplying him with pain but also pleasure.” The moment serves as a turning point, a marked goal post to which Alicia can no longer return.
In terms of business and commerciality, Mauregui confesses that he was pretty worried about having such a scene in the film. “Those types of scenes are the ones that get complicated in the financial process. It could take away some funds,” he says.
The tug-of-war between pain and pleasure speaks to a broader framework of institutional violence, specifically attributed by La Guerra Sucia (or The Dirty War) that ravaged Argentina and featured a prominent military state and dictatorship. Mauregui plants Alicia’s dark past during the militarized takeover, giving the film yet another layer in its complex character structure. “Here in Argentina, we don’t have a lot of serial killers,” he says, adding that “the state and military would disappear people. Out of fear, they wouldn’t say or ask anything. That is horror. In that frame, Alicia and César have a perfect scenario to hide their crimes.”
While Mauregui lived most of his life under a democracy, his parents knew what it was like before. “I always saw in them the love and devotion for democracy. There is still a wound on our heritage,” he says. He brings that fear and overwhelming darkness to Alicia, colored by Carmen Maura’s delicate acting brush and vibrant emotional paint set. Vieja Loca wouldn’t hit nearly as hard without such a powerful and grounded storyboard.
Of course, it also helps that Mauregui packs in eerie visuals that seem to seep into the skin. Pouring rain soundtracks the terror unraveling inside the four walls of her home, where no one else can hear Pedro’s cries for help. Like many, his understanding of horror began many years ago when he used to rent movies like Evil Dead II and House on VHS, as well as being seated in the theater for The Exorcist. “That night, I had to leave the light on the whole night because I was very, very scared,” he chuckles.
For him, Vieja Loca is as special as all those experiences, perhaps even moreso. And for us, the film packs a resonant chord that’ll live forever.
