Antonio Banderas, on the 20th anniversary of 'El camino de los ingleses': "It was the beginning of my return home"

At the time, I didn't know it. Or at least, I wasn't aware of it. But there lay the first stone of his return to theater, the project of the Teatro del Soho Caixabank, his revival of great musicals in Spanish versions, and ultimately, the return to his roots. And the paradox is that all that scenario was provoked by a movie. And a book: 'El camino de los ingleses' by Antonio Soler. In that chronicle of 70s Malaga from the novel, Antonio Banderas saw himself reflected and soon turned that plot into his second movie as a director. And in his first—and much anticipated—shooting in Malaga, after being the king of the mambo and the most mocking Zorro in Hollywood. As Gil de Biedma would say, "now that almost everything was twenty years ago," it turns out that this emblematic film also marks the twentieth anniversary of its release, and the Albéniz cinema is celebrating this Friday with a special screening that Banderas will attend, along with members of his team.

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On the eve of today's premiere, SUR has knocked on the door of the dressing room of the director and actor from Malaga to reminisce, and his first memory with the perspective of time is precisely with his personal compass. "It was the real beginning of my return home," admits Antonio in the first person. An impulse that also came with a crazy desire to tell the story of Miguelito Dávila, whose feelings were very similar to those the filmmaker himself experienced in his youth. "I wanted to talk about my land and very personal things, like that group of young people with whom I worked in the 70s here in Malaga and who had the dream of going out and transcending beyond our land," confesses the actor, who in that 2006 had just released the sequel 'The Legend of Zorro' and inaugurated his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

"I tried to forget about the cinema made in the factories of the North American studios and make a more modest film"

Antonio Banderas

Director

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Nevertheless, Banderas wanted another path for his return to Spain and for his directing career. "I tried to forget about the cinema made in the factories of the North American studios and make a more modest film," confesses the director about the film which, indeed, managed a budget light years away from those of Hollywood, although very generous for Spanish standards: more than six million euros that, two decades later, still hold the title of the most expensive Malaga production in history.

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What the Malaga native also moved away from were the formulas and blockbuster genres to compose a very personal film. An opportunity he did not miss when his friend Antonio Meliveo told him about Soler's book that had just won the Nadal Prize. "He read the novel and recognized himself in those boys," recalls the writer of 'El camino de los ingleses', who could not imagine that, shortly after, he would also sign the script that ended up nominated for a Goya. "The idea of the adaptation came from Banderas and, although I told him I wouldn't write it, he replied that this was our story and that I was the father of this, so he convinced me and I do not regret it at all," explains the author of 'Las bailarinas muertas' and 'Sur' who, since then, has not set foot on a set. "For me to do it again, another seducer like Antonio would have to appear," acknowledges Soler.

The superstar and the unexpected character

The alluded seducer takes the word again to reflect on the story of Miguelito Dávila and co. in that luminous and oppressive Malaga of the end of adolescence. "The film addresses those dreams that got trapped, as is the case of the protagonist, who was left behind and never left. At its core, it's a song to fatality, a poem about fatality," maintains Antonio Banderas, who, after the time elapsed, is very "curious" to see the film again with an audience and on the big screen, as it will be shown this afternoon at the Albéniz, with the presence also of some of the protagonists; the very Antonio Soler; the producers Gustavo Ferrada, Carlos Taillefer, and Antonio Meliveo, and the director of the Malaga Festival, Juan Antonio Vigar.

'El camino de los ingleses' was also quite an academy for actors, from which careers took off. "Like Mario Casas who has become a superstar and whom I adore. But also María Ruiz, who is now directing films and with whom I will probably work. Marta Nieto, who has also become a very important actress. For almost all of them, it was the first movie they made," recalls Banderas, who also remembers some names with previous careers, like Félix Gómez, Fran Perea, Antonio Garrido, and the veterans Victoria Abril and Juan Diego, in addition to the newcomers Alberto Amarilla and, "of course, Raúl Arévalo."

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"The character of Raúl Arévalo was so powerful that even I had his mental image in place of the one I had originally written" in the novel

Antonio Soler

Screenwriter and writer

Antonio Soler even remembers the day a very young Arévalo arrived at the casting for a more episodic role and ended up being given the role of Miguelito Dávila's squire. "When Raúl finished his test, Banderas and I looked at each other and said: 'This guy is Babirusa'," recounts the writer and screenwriter, who, when reviewing his original novel a few months ago for the reissue, encountered a surprise. "Reading the character's description, it says he is short and with slanted eyes, and then I thought: 'But he is tall'. And it's that the character of Raúl Arévalo in the movie was so powerful that even I had his mental image in place of the one I had originally written," admits the writer, who also reveals that he participated as an extra in a prison scene, along with his colleague Pablo Aranda and the historian Fernando Arcas, but the sequence was left on the cutting room floor.

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During the full Bridge of the Constitution "I closed the Park to shoot. Half of Malaga changed my title from favorite son to son of..."

Antonio Banderas

Director and actor

From the shooting, which passed through iconic settings of the city, like the Plaza de la Merced, La Malagueta, or Churriana, Banderas also remembers well, traveling to the Universidad Laboral, where the summer scenes were shot in full December. "I put actors and extras in the pool and I think an epidemic of pneumonia came out of there," revives the director of the movie. But if there is one sequence he does not forget, it is the one that gave him the most headaches and problems since it stopped the city in the full Bridge of the Constitution. "It was on December 6, the day of the Immaculate Conception, when people came from all over the province for shopping and I closed the Park to shoot. Half of Malaga changed my title from favorite son to son of...," he closes the chapter with irony.