‘Doctor Portuondo’ is already among us. Filmin’s first original series is waiting for new patients to commune with Carlo Padial’s neurotic therapy, with whom we had the pleasure of chatting again about his brilliant new psychodrama session.
The theater of panic
It is always a pleasure to chat with one of the most restless and neurotic minds in our audiovisual. Padial’s brand new series offers a black comedy based on experiences that he had previously captured in a fantastic novel that now gives rise to Filmin’s first original series.
Kiko Vega (KV): After a couple of more aggressive jobs you formally arrive in Portuondo and mark your mature work, a much more academic staging.
Carlo Padial (CP): In ‘Algo muy gordo’ or ‘You are very film’ I explored something very genuine in me, part of who I am through a host of very specific influences, but it is only part of what interested. Since I was little my favorite cartoons were those of Daffy Duck talking to the audience, breaking the rules, going out of the box. I think that ‘My crazy Erasmus’ has a lot of that, of formal breakup and subversion. To put the viewer in trouble. We also had that in ‘Go, Ibiza, Go!’, A humor that led you to a strange catharsis from the very form. Your first jobs mark you a lot, but I have always been interested in many other things.
I’m a big fan of things that have nothing to do with what I showed in those movies. ‘Doctor Portuondo’ is the place I wanted to go, but had not had the opportunity to carry out this type of project. When the opportunity to do the series came, we were trying to make a movie with those characteristics. They offered me the opportunity and I clung to it euphoric. People are afraid of being pigeonholed and maybe that’s why the first jobs are always somewhat impersonal or they cater more to the fashions in the industry or festivals, and the opportunity to show who you are is lost. I dared to do my things, but now I want to do others. Living with a film critic, I have also received new influences, such as ‘My dinner with André’ or ‘Modern Romance’, by Albert Brooks. That way of doing comedy blows my mind, with all those neurotic people talking a lot in closed spaces. That connects with something that Carlos de Diego and I love, the weird theater of Arrabal, Strindberg or Eugene O’Neill. Gather a group of friends or family to fight in a cerebral way. The series gave me just that.
KV: The setting of the office is very messy, it seems like a ghost story. Was that your memory?
CP: It almost seems a series of ghosts, Yes. There is a strange phantasmagoria floating in the environment. I remember it as is. Those ghosts in the office haunt the protagonist and contaminate everything. Nobody really knows what the hell is wrong with him. Me neither, but they are touched by something strange. That seduces me, not knowing what it is. I have a very vivid memory of those walls, almost as if it were a set. I think it has to do with the fact that the closer you get to a personal psychological truth, the more unreal what comes next becomes. And that seemed very nice to me, and also to frame the doctor and the group in that kind of weird psychological high. I was lucky that the cast and the entire crew understood it perfectly.
KV: Did it give you extra respect or fear to deal with issues like schizophrenia in these times that we live in?
CP: It is a very sensitive issue. I, who live a little in my world, was not aware while writing it. But as we were rehearsing, recording and editing, especially in this last phase, I did realize that the chapter on the schizophrenic patient had to be well tune. Even on the set, we measured Llimoo’s performance well, but always without cutting off his creation. He is a resourceful comedian and we were careful not to indulge in parody. Yes we were careful in that regard. I believe that I approach the subject with great respect and also with sincerity. It is inspired by a real patient that I knew and it made a great impression on me because of how much it reminded me of me, it moved me a lot. I saw what I could have been. They are the same conflicts, but one is faced from delirium and the other from more neurotic parameters.
KV: Would you like to go back to those quirky characters from group therapy?
CP: I would love to. While we were editing it was very bad for me not to see more of these people. I was left wanting to see his individual therapies, details of his personal life … if there was a second season I have no doubt and I would try to exploit these people to the maximum. Especially since the book gave rise to that. In the book the doctor passes away and the patients continued to stay, making an almost spiritist therapy, more spooky even.
KV: What was it like to see you in Nacho Sánchez’s devastating monologue from the last episode?
CP: I was not interested so much if I had lived it or not as that the whole series was a kind of satire on the neuroses of my generation, so narcissistic she. I think we have great difficulty relating to the outside world, we are too focused on ourselves. The doctor and I are there not so much as real characters, but to give rise to these fables between psychological and Zen about existence and mental health. All the questions that I brought him to Portuondo and that he solved for me with those psychoanalytic-Zen paradoxes that did not really solve anything. There is a very sterile debate around the first person that I think is formulated by people who live a little behind the back of reality. In 2021 everyone is fabulating their lives.
KV: The protagonist of the series studies, he prepares the sessions to impress. And that reminded me a lot of Twitter. How are you doing with Twitter, that you are always active.
CP: There is some of that. I relate to the world through ingenuity. You take me to a meeting and I will be in a corner drinking white wine looking at the ground unless I wake up to tell you something concrete and in a childish way. I have nothing more than that. My jokes and my notes, which I always carry. It took me years of therapy to break with that. For me it has been a vital challenge to be able to start a conversation a little more human. Twitter is a possibility to throw only jokes, only wit. But I think the Twitter where it was worth doing that is over. You are on a polarized Twitter, nobody is looking for jokes, only creating sides. I don’t like Twitter from 2021 anymore and I’m not leaving because I can’t afford it. I’m looking forward to it doing well enough to be able to quit because I don’t like what it’s become at all. Everyone lying, everyone sending signals to please and fit into agendas. I find it disgusting. Right now my timeline is based on Prince fans. People putting watercolors or cooking purple cakes.