[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The new film In the Summers, chronicles the relationship between a father and his two daughters as they come to visit him for a few weeks each year. The father just happens to be played by Grammy award winning reggaeton superstar, Residente. Each year, sisters Violeta and Eva fly to Las Cruces, Mexico, New Mexico, to spend some time with their dad, Vicente. Vicente is a brilliant man from Puerto Rico, a whiz with math and physics, but he can't seem to get out of his own way or to stop drinking.

Vicente also clearly plays favorites. He sees Violeta as his protege and dismisses Eva. When his drinking and toxic behavior cause him to put his daughters in danger, their relationship changes forever. In the Summers is the feature directorial debut for writer and director Alessandra Lacorazza. IndieWire says the movie is, "a delicate portrait of how fraught relationships can change over time." It is in theaters this Friday, and Alessandra Lacorazza joins me in studio. It's nice to meet you.

Alessandra Lacorazza: Thank you so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: You told Sundance, "After my father died unexpectedly, I had a lot of anger and unanswered questions. Making this film was a way to access those answers." What questions did you have?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Today's actually his 14-year death anniversary, so I'm thinking about that a lot. I think just what is forgiveness possible and what is healing from, when someone dies, how do you heal after that? I think those are still somewhat unanswered for me.

Alison Stewart: What aspects of a relationship with a father did you want to capture in this film?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I think I wanted to capture the complexity of their relationships. I mean, especially with my father, there was so much beauty that he taught me, my love of science, my love of questioning things. There was also the masculinity that sometimes presents in the Latin community and how to battle that. I just wanted to display how complex our relationships are with our parents and how they make us who we are, and we have to kind of suffer the consequences of that.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about casting. Residente, huge star. How did he come to be in your film?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I love him. He was mentioned. I hadn't thought of him because I'm a huge fan, and my sisters have been huge fans our whole lives. Someone mentioned him as we were thinking about casting, and it was, for me, the perfect fit from the beginning because when you look at him, he has that rough exterior. He has the stereotypes of a Latin man. He's got the tattoos, but then you listen to his music and you listen to his art, and he's so soulful and so smart. That's what I wanted to kind of capture in this character. It's just that complexity to kind of fight against some of the stereotypes that the Latin community faces.

Alison Stewart: Well, you got somebody at the top of their game in the music industry in one set of artistry. How did you deal with him in a less familiar situation?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I mean, he's just a talent. He's a complete talent. He came in very prepared, they're like, "Oh, this is your--" His first feature, but he's been in front of the camera his whole life, so he was very attuned to it, and it was more about making sure he understood the character, the nuances of the character through time because that is part of the difficulty of playing this role. He was just a pleasure to work with.

Alison Stewart: What do you think he brought to this part of Vincente that you really didn't necessarily think was going to happen? You're like, "Oh, that's interesting."

Alessandra Lacorazza: I mean, I think he has such an expressive face, and he's able to do so much by saying nothing. That is what I wanted. With any of my actors, I wasn't sure I was going to get, but he just has those eyes that communicate, and that was incredible.

Alison Stewart: He can turn from charming to truly menacing in a moment. How did you achieve that balance with him of being so charming, so lovely, and in a split second, really turning?

Alessandra Lacorazza: That's just something that he brought very naturally to the role. For us, it was the balance through time, like knowing what summer he was in and what we were trying to communicate with the relationships in that summer and making sure we stayed on track with that. He just has that energy. I think he's been a performer his whole life, so he's actually just very attuned to his emotions and able to display them at a drop of a hat.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about casting the girls. You have three different sets of actors playing two daughters, Violet and Eva. They start really young, they move into teenage adolescents, and they become young women. First of all, what is the casting like to three different sets of actors?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes, that was really difficult. I had an incredible casting director that helped out with that, but our goal was to have a through line, so we prioritized casting the younger girls first and then the older ones and hoping that the middle would be a bridge between them. I was just trying to cast the character and then hoping that it matched. There were some things about how they looked that we wanted to match, but we just wanted someone to understand the character perfectly, but it was hard. We were casting right up until right before shooting.

Alison Stewart: Wow. What is that like when you're casting right up to before shooting?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Stressful. Very, very stressful. Very stressful.

Alison Stewart: How did Residente, how did he perform with each set of actors? I mean, he had three very different-- Well, I guess there were different aspects of his personality, but he did have to connect with each set of actors.

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes. We started off with him mostly doing scenes with the younger girls, and then we also encouraged him out of set to go get ice cream with him and just really trying to cultivate a sense of family. The two young girls were just such a beautiful spirit on set. They brought their charm. They had special handshakes that they had with everyone. It was really sweet. That's where we started and then we slowly built up, so then he had a relationship with the older ones.

I, for example, told him, I was like, "Don't talk to Sasha," who plays older Eva because I wanted that friction to stay. We tried to orchestrate a little bit of that to keep those dynamics on set because we didn't have time to rehearse. This is an indie film. There was zero rehearsal.

Alison Stewart: How many shooting days?

Alessandra Lacorazza: We had 30 shooting days, plus the still lives, which was 31.

Alison Stewart: Wow. There are no subtitles in this. It goes from English to Spanish like that. First of all, why not? Why no subtitles?

Alessandra Lacorazza: That was an idea I had when we were on set because it was very bilingual and it flowed very quickly. For me, it was two things. One, a lot of Latins in the US don't speak Spanish, and the girls, we never find out in the film how much Spanish they know. They never speak back. I wanted to put the audience in that perspective. Secondly, I also wanted to ask the audience to lean in, to not worry about the actual dialogue that's being delivered, but feel the emotions, feel the intention behind them.

Alison Stewart: Well, it's funny. I was leaning in, trying, like, "Can I understand it? Do I understand a little bit of it?" At the same time, I realized I don't really have to. You know what I mean?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: How did you decide when someone would be speaking Spanish versus English, or did you let your actors go?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I let my actors go. Whatever felt natural, that was my only rule. I wanted things to feel organic and natural. Whatever happened, happened.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Alessandra Lacorazza. The name of her film is In the Summers. It's about a father who is troubled, has two troubling daughters, young daughters. They're not troubling. Everybody's troubled, let's put it that way. Let's talk about where you shot. Why did you select Las Cruces?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I found it on Google Maps, actually, but I wanted something that captured all the different parts of my upbringing. I wanted a place that had a lot of natural beauty. I wanted a place that felt very Latin, and I wanted that kind of heat of summer. There was also something about the metaphor of the desert that worked really well for these characters. Then I just was on Google maps trying to search for a place. It called out to me, and I called my sister, and I was like, "We're going to Las Cruces, New Mexico." She was like, "Okay." The second we got there, it felt like the right fit.

Alison Stewart: It was cool, though. You went to film on the white sands in New Mexico.

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes.

Alison Stewart: First of all, how did you film in all white? I know enough about films.

Alessandra Lacorazza: It feels like 108 degrees that day.

Alison Stewart: Oh, no.

Alessandra Lacorazza: It was pretty wild, but beautiful, and yes, a feat.

Alison Stewart: How did you deal with the heat? I mean, that sounds kind of an obvious question, but it is an issue.

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes. Well, some people were on the point of almost fainting, so we shot very early in the morning. I do really well in the heat, so it didn't affect me. We had to get out of there before noon because it got too hot.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because the airport becomes a scene, and it's where Vicente picks up the kids. In the first time he's picking them up, his hands are shaking a little bit when he's meeting them. What did you want to communicate through Vicente's body language?

Alessandra Lacorazza: For me, it's that nervousness and anticipation of seeing his daughters for the first time in a new space. He really wants to make that first impression. I wanted the audience at the beginning to connect with him because that's really the only time we're with him alone. Then the POV really changes to the daughters. I just wanted the audience to kind of-- it's almost a moment of tenderness at the beginning to center us in his anxiety of wanting to make a good impression.

Alison Stewart: He's very smart when it comes to math and to physics. He's tutoring a girl, but it doesn't seem to necessarily have moved his life forward. How does Vicente's underutilized intelligence affect him?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I mean, I think anyone who has a lot of potential and is unable to reach it for any amount of different reasons, whether it's economic or mental health, that ends up being kind of an albatross on them. I think when you know you're able to do more, but you don't, that must affect your psyche in a really deep way. I think that is part of Vicente's wounds.

Alison Stewart: How do the girls seek his approval when they first meet him?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes. Well, I think Violeta is not actually that interested in seeking his approval, but Eva, she wants to be loved so badly. She sees the best in him. She sees how good he can be and just wants his affection, but wanting to connect, he connects through games, and so playing games and being playful is like a theme throughout the film.

Alison Stewart: So our audience understands, can you describe a time in the film where Eva is seeking help from him, but he's really just giving her the hand, like, not now.

Alessandra Lacorazza: I mean, it kind of happens constantly. In the second summer, Eva comes back and gives him a gift of an ashtray, and she just wants to connect with him and be accepted by him. He's just doesn't respect that. He knows how to respect Violeta because he knows intellectually how to connect with her. With Eva, who's different in a lot of ways, he doesn't know how to reach her.

Alison Stewart: You see it later that the gift she gives him, he turns it into an ashtray. It's just full of stuff.

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes.

Alison Stewart: We are talking about the film In the Summers with its writer and director, Alessandra Lacorazza. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It. This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm speaking with writer and director, Alessandra Lacorazza about her new film In the Summers, which opens in theaters on Friday. It stars Residente as a troubled father of two young daughters. In one scene that really stands out, Violeta gets a little aggressive with Vincent, and he says, "You think you're better than me." Why does Vincent feel that way?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I mean, I think, first of all, she is being able to achieve things that he didn't have access to. She is going to school, she's getting good grades. In his addiction, and when he's drunk, he wants to put her down, and he doesn't want to go on and be out of the house. I think he's just trying to put her down and wants to have her life in a certain way. Maybe there's a jealousy there.

Alison Stewart: How did you think about introducing and also escalating Vicente's drinking?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes, it's drinking and drugs. We kind of mapped out the character, so it's something that he-- It's like a self-soothing thing that a lot of people with mental health issues also use as coping mechanisms. We wanted to track where his mental health was in terms of his drug use as well. It starts off as self-soothing, like drinking just a little bit after work or after whatever, and it escalates the more his emotions escalate.

Alison Stewart: You see this house, the house, we see him over a period of years, and his house really, really reflects his mental state. Will you describe for people the evolution of the house?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes. He inherits the house from his mom. When you get it, it looks like an abuela's house, and he hasn't really made it his own yet. There's not a lot of trinkets in there that are his. It's still really his mom's house. As time evolves, he still doesn't add a lot to it, but it continues to kind of get darker, get dirtier, get messier, and so it kind of mirrors his mental state throughout the film.

Alison Stewart: The first scene, the pool's lovely. The kids are playing in the pool. The next scene, the pool's dark, and then they see it's a playground for his new daughter, which we'll talk about in just a minute. It's amazing to see what the scenery does for the actors.

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes, and it also helps put the actors in the scene. I think that helped the actors just be in the world a little bit more, too.

Alison Stewart: You see him, though, he wants to share drugs with-- I think it's Violeta. He wants to smoke weed with him. Why is he telling himself why this is a good thing, to have his daughter smoke weed with him?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I think he doesn't think of weed as bad, and he's like, "You're going to have it. You're going to do it anyways. You might as well do it in a safe environment." Not really understanding what he's exposing her to.

Alison Stewart: When you're talking about the sisters in this film, how did you want to show their friendship and their love for each other and how it changed over the years?

Alessandra Lacorazza: For me, that's one of the most important parts of the film. I have a sister I'm extremely close with, and I think one of the powerful things siblings do is be a witness to everything that's happening. When you go through a trauma or you go through something difficult, that's the only other person who's there to witness. I wanted the two sisters to be that for each other. For me, at the end, it's their connection, their relationship, and their friendship that really make it so that they can heal from this. I wanted that to be a core of the film.

Alison Stewart: How does the parent-child dynamic shift as they get older? They go from little kids to adolescents to young adults.

Alessandra Lacorazza: For me, the triangle of dynamics between the three of them is always important. I think that's something that happens in your 20s and 30s where you see your parents in a different light. They're no longer on this pedestal, they're no longer these heroes, though I'm not sure for Violeta-Vicente was ever on that big of a pedestal. Once you get older, you're analyzing your own life and you're seeing them in a different light, and there's a moment where things turn and your parents become human. That's what's starting to happen for them in that last summer. There's like a humanity that enters in the way they view the father.

Alison Stewart: We have a very limited backstory on this family. We don't really know about mom, necessarily. Why did you want to keep that part of the kids' lives more mysterious? What happens in the other 10 months?

Alessandra Lacorazza: For me, those absences are very important, very loud, but I really wanted to be a slice of life. I wanted to experience this father just through these moments in which he interacts with his daughters and leave it out there. For me, trusting the audience to put everything together and allowing the audience to have the ability to have an imagination around that was very important.

Alison Stewart: Do you have an imagination of what the mom is like and what their life is like?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes. For me, everything, and with the actors, we talked about it. It was very important for the actors to understand what happened between the summers because they could bring those emotions into the next summer. Did they talk to the dad at all? Did he call for Christmas? Where were they in school? What friendships did they have? All of that backstory was built in very detailed, and so you feel it. My hope is that the audience feels it, but doesn't need to be told it.

Alison Stewart: One of the actors, one of the girls, has to do a whole summer by herself. We'll just say that so people don't get way too much. Tell me a little bit about working with the girl who plays Eva in that scene where she's really there just visiting her dad.

Alessandra Lacorazza: That, to me, is very heartbreaking part of the film, but she returns to try-- For me, Eva is the hope of the film. She sees the hope in Vicente, and her going to connect with her dad was trying to be hopeful that he might be able to bounce back and connect back. Working with the actor-- that was one of the more difficult casting decisions because she's one of the few, besides René, that plays more than one summer. She has that joyful, and she has that youthful energy in summer two.

Then in summer three, she's kind of going through that change. It was kind of tapping into the different parts of the emotion, almost treating it as two different characters, but seeing that evolution. She did, I think, an incredible job.

Alison Stewart: The film also charts Violeta's queer awakening. Why was this an aspect that you wanted to include in the film, and very subtly?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Well, I'm queer. I've been queer my whole life. For me, that was an important part to include. Also, the stories about queerness, I feel sometimes are centered around sexuality or gender. I wanted this to be centered around a family dynamic, but still include queer themes and a queer character. That was really important to me to have and have that reflection. I didn't want the trauma or the plot points to be around queerness. I wanted it to be around the family dynamics. Then in addition to, queer people have family problems too. It's not always related to our queerness.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the film In the Summers with its writer and director, Alessandra Lacorazza. It opens in theaters on Friday. In the film, Vincente has another daughter with another woman. It's a little girl. She's about four or five. She's named Natalia. Is Vincente a different father to Natalia than he is with his other two daughters?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I mean, absolutely. That's his hope. He wants to try again. He wants a fresh start.

Alison Stewart: Do you think he's going to have a fresh start?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I mean, I think that's a big question, right?

Alison Stewart: Because you're watching him and he's sort of like, "Oh gosh, is he doing the same thing again? He's doing the same thing again. Oh, no, he's doing the same thing again."

Alessandra Lacorazza: But I think he's trying. For me, that's the hope of the film, is that he doesn't give up trying, both with his older daughters and with his new daughter. He really wants to get it right. He wants to be a good father. Deep down, he wants to connect and be able to show up for them in the way that he sees, but he gets in his own way.

Alison Stewart: In an interview with Sundance, you said, "Note to self, avoid any scenes with cars."

Alessandra Lacorazza: Oh, God. Yes.

Alison Stewart: There are a lot of cars in this movie. Well, first of all, why would you want to avoid them?

Alessandra Lacorazza: They're very costly and really complicated and can eat up your days really quickly.

Alison Stewart: You ended up with a lot of cars in the film. Did that pan out that they ended up costing you a lot of money or time?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes. I mean, in the car crash and there's just so many cars involved. I didn't know how hard it was to work with cars. I think that was also part of it. This is my first film. Don't have a lot of experience. A lot of what happened was just by guts. Yes, cars don't recommend.

Alison Stewart: One of the things that's interesting about the film is you have these little tableaus between the sections, telling about each summer trip. Why did you want to present these tableaus to us?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Yes, those were something that were in the script and were very important to me. My inspiration was the Dutch Vanitas paintings. The Memento Moris. They're these still lives that kind of show you your mortality by juxtaposing different images, like a candle next to a dead fish, next to flowers. That's what I think this film is a little bit. It's a moment for us to reflect on our own mortality and the time we have here on the planet. For me, that was a grounding moment for the audience that I felt was important to include.

Alison Stewart: What do you hope people leave the theater talking or thinking about?

Alessandra Lacorazza: I think my deepest hope is for the audience to understand the complexity of the human experience and how it's not always just good or bad, but we are a combination of all those things.

Alison Stewart: I ask almost every director who comes in, you had to make some decision, because that's what directors do, they make decisions. What was a tough decision?

Alessandra Lacorazza: Oh my God. They were all hard in some ways. I think one of the hard decisions in the editing room was originally there were five summers, and we combined the first two summers into the first summer. I think that was a good decision, but it wasn't an easy one to come to.

Alison Stewart: Why did you have to make that choice?

Alessandra Lacorazza: For pacing and rhythm and just trying to-- In the editing room, you almost have to forget what you wrote and forget what you shot and just work with the tools that you have in front of you. You're like sculpting something completely new, and it just wasn't working as two summers. The rhythm wasn't working, the cadence wasn't working. We're like, "Let's start again and combine them." It ended up working well.

Alison Stewart: Let's give your editor a shout out.

Alessandra Lacorazza: Oh, God. I had the best editor, Adam Dicterow. He was incredible.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is In the Summers. I've been speaking with its writer and director, Alessandra Lacorazza. It is in theaters this Friday. Thank you for coming to join us.

Alessandra Lacorazza: Thank you so much for having me.

 

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