The director Polo Menárguez makes his début in feature films of fiction with El Plan, based on the homonymous play by Ignasi Vidal. The film, that has been presented in the 16th edition of the Seville Festival, counts on lead actors as Antonio de la Torre, Raúl Arévalo or Chema del Barco, who work again together after Tarde Para La Ira.
The story addresses a group of unemployed men who want to pull off a robbery one morning at 9 am, whereby the three lead characters start to show their common aspects as their own plan gets complicated. According to Menárguez, El Plan has comedy brush-strokes, however, “it is a drama without palliatives”. The feature film is developed at one unique space, the interior of a house, and on it, the director wanted to point out “the essence of the three characters locked in the space”.
Nacho La Casa, producer of the film, has explained that the project was born when Polo Menárguez saw the original version in the theatre. “I came out from the play really impressed, so he passed me the script and we made contact with Ignasi very fast”, has explained. By coincidence, all the actors in the film had gone to see the play to the theatre as well and everyone got delighted. This made easier that the team could get together to discuss the script adaptation, a script really loyal to the original play which was transformed through a collaborative work among actors. For Polo, the film has “a very theatrical essence. Although I wanted to put it fairer, and closer to cinematography”.
The film, shot in only three weeks, is according to the director “a drama without palliatives. We use comedy as a tool; the film can be considered even as a tragedy”. The feature film is developed in a unique localisation, at a house interior in which the director wanted to point out “the essence of the three characters locked in the space”, getting inspired in films as The Exterminating Angel, by Luis Buñuel.
The first work by Polo Menárguez, Dos Amigos, was released in 2013 in the Resistances section of the Seville Festival, and projected in Toulouse. From his extensive career as a short film director, we can point out Si Tuvieran Ojos, selected by several festivals and deserving of eleven awards. After working as staging assistant of Fernando León de Aranoa, he went to International Film School of San Antonio de los Baños, in Cuba. Invierno En Europa, his first feature documentary film, obtained a Special Mention by the jury in the SEMINCI (the international film week in Valladolid) in 2017. He has directed the documentary serie Dreams Without Borders, which he is author of four episodes. El Plan, his last film, was released in Valladolid.
