Juan Pablo Olyslager, Diane Bathen – Tremors #Berlinale2019

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Juan Pablo Olyslager and Diane Bathen, actors of the film Tremors.

Juan Pablo Olyslager and Diane Bathen tell us the work and the struggle to catch the perfect depiction of the characters of a bisexual man caught and outed in the family, and his wife who cannot deal with it and forces him to enter a “corrective therapy” center, with all the violence and psychological distress this will ensue. We talk about religion and society in Guatemala, and the crossed influences that create the short circuit that will send Pablo’s life into disarray.

Tremors: When Pablo arrives at his family’s house outside Guatemala City, everyone is already waiting tensely for this beloved brother, son and husband to appear. Everyone at the clan’s villa is horrified: Pablo has fallen in love with another man, Francisco. In doing so, he is calling into question all the values by which this deeply religious evangelical family lives. In spite of resistance from his relatives, Pablo moves in with Francisco, who is closely linked to the city’s subculture and leads a completely different, liberated existence. Pablo loses his old home, but somehow never really settles in the new one. His wish to unite the two worlds turns out to be a dead end. Putting their faith before everything else, his relatives are adamant that Pablo can be ‘healed’. With help from their ultra-religious community, the family does everything in its power to get their prodigal son back on track, no matter the cost. In his very personal second film, Jayro Bustamante makes use of a consistently direct cinematic style to describe one individual’s bid to break away and find their identity and a sense of belonging. In a deeply repressive society God loves the sinner, but not the sin itself.