Obsession’s outcome: A film examining the nature of chance

It is said that filmmaking often is a form of therapy. In the case of Spanish-born filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, it has been more like an exorcism.

Ever since he witnessed, as an impressionable 9-year-old, two jets colliding on the runway in his hometown of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Fresnadillo has been consumed by a fascination with the intertwined concepts of fate, life and death. As an adult, he collected anecdotes about survivors of plane crashes, searched for stories about people who were able to escape their fates at the last minute and poured over Primo Levi’s memoirs of Holocaust survival.

“Luck is something that probably obsessed me in all my life,” he says in a phone interview from Manhattan, where he recently flew in for a screening of his debut feature, the thriller-cum-fable “Intacto.” “So I decided to tell all my feelings about it in my first movie.”

When Fresnadillo set out to make a therapeutic picture, he had no inkling that his somber meditation on the metaphysical nature of chance would garner major accolades in his native Spain and yield a remake deal with a major Hollywood studio.

The attention being paid to the film, opening today in limited release, also illustrates the rising fortunes of Spanish-language cinema in this country.

Fresnadillo, 35, is only the latest addition to a crop of new talents from Latin America and Spain whose brazen, confident work has afforded them a gateway into American pop culture.

Last year, Spaniard Alejandro Amenabar made his English-language debut with the acclaimed art-house horror pic “The Others,” just as his 1997 thriller “Abre Los Ojos” was being retooled as “Vanilla Sky” with such A-list Hollywood players as Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe. After spectacular artistic coups with “Amores Perros” and “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” Mexico’s Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu and Alfonso Cuaron, respectively, are now both directing their first big-budget Hollywood productions (in Cuaron’s case, no less than the third installment in the Harry Potter chronicles).

The reason for this renaissance? “We are probably making movies with real feelings, with real characters, and I think the current world situation demands that,” Fresnadillo wagers.

Even though in the grand scheme of Hollywood production, foreign pictures still barely make a dent, their concepts and ideas eventually seep in and invigorate the craft at large. “Mainstream movies are really influenced by little movies,” he says. “It has always happened, but this time it is happening in particular with Latin cinema -- it’s great.”

Thriller and fairy tale

In a contemporary context in which belief in religion and esoteric ideologies is perhaps waning, “Intacto” proposes the intriguing, almost medieval notion of random fortune as the determining factor of one’s destiny. Part thriller, part fairy tale, the film traces the fates of a cabal of individuals united in their conviction that luck itself, good and bad, is a tangible commodity to be won, hoarded, lost, sold or teased out of unsuspecting victims. To find out who is the richest, they compete against one another with ever more audacious games of chance.

“Intacto’s” luck addicts share one common trait: They have emerged unscathed from life-threatening circumstances -- plane crashes, car accidents, bullfights -- and have developed a peculiar compulsion to reenact their initial encounter with chance, daring their good fortunes to carry them through each time.

In the parlance of psychotherapists, the phenomenon is known as survivor’s guilt, and “Intacto,” Fresnadillo says, is “a fable about the strange ways in which people try to liberate themselves from that crazy feeling.”

Fresnadillo recalls that “when we were doing research for the film, we discovered amazing things, especially about Holocaust survivors. There have been cases when those who survived concentration camps didn’t accept the idea that they lived while a lot of other people, most probably all their loved ones, died. So they risked their own lives on purpose, and in some strange cases, they risked other people’s lives too. That dark way to live your life after a terrible experience obsessed me a lot.”

Fortune and misfortune were also the twin concepts behind his short film “Esposados” (Linked), a pitch-black burlesque comedy about a hapless husband bent on offing his wife and collecting her jackpot earnings to start a new life. On the strength of these 15 minutes of material (nominated in 1997 for a live action short Oscar), Fresnadillo was allowed a chance to direct his first feature-length project.

The film features the lunarscapes of Fresnadillo’s homeland, an archipelago off Morocco notable for its mix of touristy beaches and eerie expanses of high desert. “The Canary Islands have a kind of surreal landscape, and I think ‘Intacto’ is really inspired by that,” the director explains.

“Intacto’s” denouement plays out in a series of stately tableaux that alternate between light and shadow. As if in a dream, the pace of action is slowed down, the mood infused with anxiety. “I thought [a dream-like] ambience would be a good way to hypnotize the public and to provoke reflection,” he says.

In that regard, the surrealist movement was a big inspiration, particularly the work of painter and fellow Canarite Oscar Dominguez. And, of course, other filmmakers; he cites as inspiration Orson Wells, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Luis Bunuel -- “directors whose signature is imprinted on every shot.”

But it was Alfred Hitchcock who bore the greatest impact on Fresnadillo’s decision to become a filmmaker. “When I was 16 years old, I watched ‘Notorious’ and I realized that I want to tell stories like that,” he says.

Fresnadillo says he can hardly believe that Disney bought the rights to remake “Intacto” and is currently developing an English-language version. “It’s a really big honor that other people were inspired by ‘Intacto,’ ” he says. (Asked whether he will direct the remake, he says: “No, no, no! All the things I needed to tell, I already did.”)

It is easy to foresee the conceit of the film -- a subterranean fellowship of extreme gamblers engaging in bizarre rituals -- evolve into new, possibly more titillating directions. But the question remains whether the philosophical wiring of the movie will survive intact in the new version. Recent cinematic history is littered with examples of visionary foreign thrillers that morphed into toothless Hollywood counterparts -- “The Vanishing,” “La Femme Nikita,” “Vanilla Sky.”

Fresnadillo accedes diplomatically that there’s generally “a fear about remakes,” but adds that he remains optimistic.

Should the new version fail, “maybe people will say, ‘Oh, the remake sucks, but you should see the original.’ And if it’s good, ‘Intacto’ will be recognized as the real inspiration.

“It’s a win-win situation,” he says with delight. “I love that!”