Venice: The Wasp Network starrer Penelope Cruz found it hard to get into the character and to understand the kind of extreme passion the character had. She featured the role of a Cuban woman who followed her ideology and prefered to go to jail over staying with her children.
The Spanish actor played a real person in the new spy drama based on Fernando Morais' book The Last Soldiers of The Cold War and she needed to understand her before getting into the character.
"So that's why I needed, you know, to talk to a lot of people there to understand that kind of extreme passion about it because I cannot judge the characters that I play and I don't have to agree with them either, but I have to 100 per cent understand where they're coming from," she said in a recent interview in Venice.
"I needed that research and everyone on the set was telling me, 'Stop asking all those questions. You are making them uncomfortable.' And I said like, 'Sorry, I am asking from a place of respect, but also I have to prepare this character and I have to, I have to deeply understand the different ways of seeing this reality.'"
The movie is based on a true story of a group of Cuban dissidents who began a new life in 1990s Miami to work towards the destabilization of the Castro regime.
Edgar Ramirez who plays one of the spies said that the role shed some light into the thought processes of such a person.
"I could not imagine to leave everything behind. I mean, to leave the people that you love the most behind and also leave them behind with such a deafening silence, because no explanations were made, no discussions were had. It was very violent. It is very violent. It's a very violent job, you know, at the core because the amount of information, of personal information that you have to withhold is crushing. And then in the end, where does the illusion begin and where does it end?"
"I mean, that's why it's the ultimate acting job, but at the same time, is really is a split personality exercise and... it is fascinating and of course I understand now better than ever why spy movies are so fascinating and interesting."
French director Olivier Assayas said he didn't expect that he will be granted the permission to shoot in Cuba which somehow became both a blessing and a curse for the production.
"Shooting the film there was a nightmare, you know. So I need to make that very clear, you know, because everything is difficult. I mean, they don't have the most basic resources to, you know, to do the most basic things you do in movies. So you know, so they have great locations, they have great technicians, they allowed us access to those crazy planes from the 1960s. I can't even believe someone flies them, a guy still flies them, and at the same... But at the same time we had some pressure where all of a sudden we felt that they were not so happy we were around, so it was ambivalent."
Wasp Network also stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Wagner Moura and Ana de Armas in pivotal roles.
It is one of the 21 films in competing in the 76th Venice Film Festival.
