In his new feature film as a director, Cuban-American actor Andy García transforms himself into a detective marked by loss and who seems to come out of classic film noir – even though he solves his cases in the TikTok era – in ‘Diamond’, which premiered out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
They are “characters who usually have a hole in their heart,” García explained at a press conference in Cannes, and recalled that this is the second time he has touched on the theme of “loss” as a filmmaker, since he tackled it in his debut feature, ‘The Lost City’ (2005), which “was a metaphor for Cuba”.
Starring Garcia himself as Joe Diamond, the film is a project that the 70-year-old actor had been trying to “sell” for 15 years, he explained, and which required “faith” because no one wanted to “buy” it.
“There is no obstacle that can’t be overcome by a dream,” he said, accompanied by the film’s producers and actors Rosemarie Dewitt and Danny Huston, who make up a star-studded cast that includes Brendan Fraser, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray and Vicky Krieps.
And “that faith extended to all of us,” Dewitt said at the press conference.
The idea for this film – which is not only a neo-noir comedy but also a love letter to the city of Los Angeles – came from helping his daughter with her English homework. His love for film noir and detective literature did the rest to get him writing.
Initially intended as a TV series, ‘Diamond’ follows a private investigator who, inseparable from his Fedora hat, dresses and behaves comically like a character out of a 1940s or 1950s movie – seemingly oblivious to the social networks, electric cars and other modernities that surround him – as he tries to clear up a murder.
His personality is a mystery that, in reality, hides a deep trauma.
The actor and filmmaker described himself as a “hopeless romantic” and even got emotional when talking about his character.
He also shared that his favorite title among the classics of film noir is ‘The Maltese Falcon’ (1941) by John Huston, father precisely of the actor Danny Huston whom he directed in ‘Diamond’, and ‘Casablanca’, which for him can be inserted in that category.
Looking to the future, he mentioned that he has other projects in the pipeline that he has been working on for years, reported Agencia EFE, such as a feature film titled ‘Hemingway and Fuentes’, about writer Ernest Hemingway and his friendship with Cuban sea captain Gregorio Fuentes, which inspired his novel ‘The Old Man and the Sea’.
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