BY STEVE RAMOS
Victoria Abril needs a cigarette - desperately. Sitting in the restaurant of a Park City, Utah, hotel, the Spanish actress fidgets in her chair, taps her fingers on the table and stares at the no smoking signs that surround her.
Abril recently found herself battling the cold and snow at the Sundance Film Festival to promote two films, the Spanish thriller Nobody Will Speak of Us When We're Dead, a festival entry, and the comic farce French Twist, currently playing in Cincinnati. This is Abril's first visit to Robert Redford's famous festival, and she finds it to be equal to its hype.
"Sundance is like the hottest discotheque for film," she says. But it's a disco that's non-smoking, and since standing outside is out of the question Abril retreats to her hotel room where she can relax and smoke in private.
In French Twist, Abril plays Loli, a housewife who discovers that her husband Laurent (Alain Chabat) has been a long-time philanderer. A chance encounter with Marijo, a butch lesbian played by the film's writer and director Josiane Balasko, offers Loli some needed comfort and the opportunity to set matters right with Laurent. Abril likes the film's farcical story but, more importantly, likes the fact that her character remains happy during all the craziness.
"It's a true love story at home without feeling guilty, without clandestinity, without lies and in stereo," Abril says between puffs. "It's fantastic, and that's the reason I say she's the most happiest woman in the world."
Balasko says she wrote the part especially for Abril and in her eyes no one else but Abril could have played this role as well.
"I've known Victoria for a long time and I've admired Victoria for a long time," Balakso says. "I think she's one of the rare actresses to be able to play dramatic characters, comic characters, sexy characters and sympathetic characters at the same time. I had to write something great because she is great."
Abril says that she accepted the role immediately and during the four years while Balasko finished the script the two of them would take short holidays together to prepare for the movie. Abril refers to her preparation as subconscious and says that when the cameras finally rolled the character was like a second skin.
The film's plot of mixed-sexual adultery may be considered too risqué for some American audiences, and per the distributor's request Balasko removed a homosexual element from the film's ending. But Balasko, a celebrity in France, is not looking for French Twist to become a huge hit in America. She expects it to enjoy a limited success with cinephiles and art-house audiences. Abril is fine with that. Art-house movies are the types of films she prefers.
American audiences may remember Abril from her 1993 Hollywood debut opposite Christian Slater and Joe Pesci in director Barry Levinson's film industry satire Jimmy Hollywood. Abril liked the fact that Levinson traveled to Spain for the sole purpose of persuading her to accept the role, but when Jimmy Hollywood was all said and done she walked away not being a big fan of the Hollywood experience.
"There was a lot of hours at the trailer," she says, lighting another cigarette. 'The set is not as accessible as in Europe and it's like being in a separated compartment train. It's less exciting and more lonely. Everyone is trying to become bigger and bigger and nobody talks to you. There's no relationships, no relationships with the technical group, no relationship with actors. But I had a good relationship with Barry Levinson."
The film was not a box-office success and did not become, as her American fans may have expected, the first in a series of Hollywood movies. But Abril never had any plans for "going Hollywood."
"I never thought about Jimmy Hollywood as opening doors to Hollywood because I choose my films one by one," says Abril. "I don't plan my career because, in fact, actors are people that wait for the phone to ring and choose between the scripts that you have. The director proposes and actors decide and it's hard to make any plans of a career."
Although she's known primarily for her work in Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's films, Abril lives in France with her husband and two children. She doesn't care if the films are Spanish, Italian, French or Portuguese. She considers herself an international actress more than a Spanish actress and accepts roles by the quality of a script more than its country of origin.
A dancer by trade, Abril had no intentions of becoming an actress until a stint as a TV game-show hostess at age 15 led to her first film role a year later. As a young woman, Abril was told by a director that acting was a way for one person to live many lives. Looking back, she now realizes how right he was.
"I think I made about 80 films and so I have had 80 lives," Abril says. "Eighty other ways to see and live on film. It's a way to give me holidays and a way to escape from reality."
With so much experience, one might think that Abril would have aspirations for directing or producing, but she doesn't. Abril insists that she likes being the vehicle of a director's dreams and has no particular roles or career changes in mind. Just yet. "Maybe I'm going to start to direct if I don't find what I like," Abril says laughing.
But those are tomorrow's questions, and Abril has no time for them today. For her, the here and now will always take priority.
"I can't care about future, only the present. That's the only way not to lose the present. I don't like to look back and to look forward. The next has to be new. I don't like deja-vu." ©