Spanish actress Penélope Cruz shot part of her scenes in ‘La bola negra’, the film by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi that aspires to the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, thinking she might have a brain aneurysm, although the doctor assured her that she could continue working.
“I started to cry,” she shared at a press conference with the rest of the crew of the film, which premiered last night on the red carpet of the Palais des Festivals with an ovation of more than 15 minutes at the end of the screening (one of the longest in the history of the French festival).
Cruz (Alcobendas, 1974) found out about the news, which in the end was a “false alarm”, following a call from her doctor, who arranged for her to go for tests a few days later.
He was about to go out to film one of the most iconic scenes of the movie, in which his character, a cupletista named Nené, goes out to sing among soldiers in a tank.
As the doctor assured her that she could continue working, Cruz decided not to say anything to ‘los Javis’ at least until she finished that scene, for which the two directors had already been working for 5 hours with all the extras. And then he was the only members of the team he told, until the tests cleared up his fears.
It is “one of the most surreal moments that I remember,” reflected the Oscar winner for ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ (Woody Allen, 2008), as she recalled climbing into a tank “thinking I had an aneurysm”.
It’s an anecdote that Cruz thought about keeping to himself, but in the end preferred to share publicly at Cannes to illustrate the intensity of the situations sometimes shared on a shoot.
“I think sometimes you have to tell these things,” he said, which are “things we live through together, sometimes, and you have to get through it.”
Penélope Cruz and her alleged brain aneurysm while filming a movie
Cruz declared herself a “big fan” of ‘Los Javis’ and said she had wanted to work with them for a long time. That is why she did not hesitate to say yes to the brief role that the directors had for her in what is her second feature film, despite the fact that the creators of the series ‘La Mesías’ proposed it to her with reservations, considering that it was too small for such a prestigious actress.
But she assured that she doesn’t decide based on the size of the assignment, but because she “wants to be part of something that matters to you.”
“I knew, in my heart, that it was something important,” he said, and “not just in our country.”
He said that what the Javis have done “is something very big”, because sometimes a film touches the heart more than textbooks, and that for many teenagers and twenty-somethings this can be a gateway to the figure of the writer Federico García Lorca.
Her character, moreover, embodies the “possibility of freedom”, something to which she gives a lot of weight because she always feels “a very strong reaction” to what doesn’t seem “fair” to her. It is something that she has fortunately been able to bring to the roles with which she has built her career, especially with Pedro Almodóvar, her “master”.
She said that it is always “special” to come to Cannes, since her first time at the age of 25 when she was a “little girl”, since she has experienced very magical moments on the Croisette, such as the premiere of ‘Volver’ in 2006 (a film for which she won the award for best female performance along with the rest of her co-stars).
“But it’s true that last night’s show reminds me of the strongest moments I’ve experienced here at the festival,” she said, although she is no longer the “girl at the table”, but a veteran who had some “maternal” instinct on the red carpet.
“I’m not old enough to be your mother either, make no mistake,” she laughed to the directors and her male co-stars present at the press conference.
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