Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“Don't worry, darling,” Manta says to her, kneeling to retrieve the pants at his ankles and pull them up. The idea that The Thing has no penis beneath the blue underwear of his Fantastic Four uniform flits around his brain like a malicious little animal. “Go with those two if you want.”

Saudade plows into the prostitute with dyed hair, her hands now against the wall, making all the furniture and the paintings of deer tremble. Aníbal Manta lights a cigarette.

The set of the shoot of the second low-budget production featuring Penny DeMink is filled with those elements designed to represent opulence and sophistication that one finds on the sets of low-budget productions where no one, from the production designer to the viewer in his hotel room, seems to have ever had any experience of opulence or sophistication. Adult films that will never see the light of theaters or ever be published in DVD format. Tapes with generic titles destined to fill the late-night loops of the last television channels in airport hotels for businessmen. Films devoid of the glamour and genuine excitement of the real pornographic industry. Without real sex acts between sex goddesses and Olympic studs. Where slow motion is a way to fill time and close-ups are a way to distract attention from the lack of budget for set design.

“Get closer to her,” says the director in a bored tone. In that same bored tone one uses to talk to one's mother or sister while paying attention to what's happening on TV. “And put your hand on her ass, fuck. Don't be afraid. Her ass won't bite you.”

The back wall of the set is covered with a moth-eaten curtain that someone took from a bankrupted theater. It's a detail of the set that no one seems to have bothered to justify in terms of the plot. As often happens with this kind of set. There are statues that look vaguely classical depicting nude women in positions close to sexual ecstasy. There is a statue of a cherub that emits a parabolic stream of water from its tiny penis. There is a canopy bed and someone has attached what look like sequins to the gauzy curtains that hang from it. There doesn't seem to be any plot justification for the sequins. The charmingly coarse signs of opulence found in low culture. Out of the darkest sewers of the film industry. And in the middle of it all, standing beside the canopy bed, Iris Gonzalvo caresses her svelte neck with a melancholy face. Her white flesh glows beneath the lights. Like a heavenly body illuminating its own crown of rotating debris. Turning it all into mere reflections and shadows of its glow. With her Rococo-style powdered wig and her high lace-up boots and her corset that constricts and raises her breasts on which someone has painted a beauty mark with eyeliner pencil. Magnificent in spite of the infinite clumsiness of her character portrayal or maybe precisely because of it.

“Are you deaf?” the director asks Iris Gonzalvo. With his eyebrows raised in an incredulous expression. Then he turns to his assistant. “Is she deaf? Am I not talking loud enough? Where did we get this girl from?”

The director's assistant shrugs her shoulders and pats the pockets of her photographer's vest as if the answer to the director's questions might be in one of them. In addition to the photographer's vest, the director's assistant wears combat pants and a stopwatch hanging from a chain around her neck and a pocket protector filled with pens and one of those baseball hats with a jokey message.

“I think that she's one of the girls the boss hooked us up with.” The director's assistant shrugs her shoulders. With her lips slightly pursed. “I'm not sure. They all end up looking the same to me.”

Iris Gonzalvo is standing beside the canopy bed. In front of a dark-haired young woman of approximately her same age and height. They both wear powdered wigs and period makeup and are dressed in very tight corsets and lace-up thigh-high boots. They both wear thong underwear that exposes their Brazilian waxes. The only difference between their equally clumsy character portrayals seems to be chromatic.

“Let's try it again,” says the director. With that expression of tried patience that consists in massaging one's eyelids with the thumb and index finger while shaking one's head slightly. Seated on his chair with a fabric back. “Let's see. What's your name again?”

“Penny,” she says, with that voice of hers that is both smooth and gravelly. Filled with sharp edges that make up for her lack of lung power.

“Very good, Penny. Let's not waste any more time. The script says: 'Girl one grabs girl two sensually and kisses her and brings her over to the bed and they both sit on the bed. Cut.' You are girl one. So you have to grab girl two sensually and kiss her and all the rest. You understand?”

Iris Gonzalvo nods. She scowls almost imperceptibly. Her skin is so white that it's almost iridescent. Too bright and magnetic to be real.

The director signals to the guy in charge of the clapper board. The director's assistant calls for action. The guy in charge of the clapper board claps it and everything seems to stop. The director, along with his assistant and the cameraman and the lighting and sound technicians and the guys in charge of the spotlights and of holding up microphones in exact locations, all create some sort of a completely immobile and vaguely baroque tableau. Inside of which a second tableau comes to life, the one made up of the two young women clumsily portraying eighteenth-century ladies with thong underwear and Brazilian waxes who are about to begin an interlude of lesbian sex. The transition between the outer tableau and the inner tableau looks like those trompe l'oeil visual tricks in puzzle magazines.

Iris Gonzalvo takes a step toward her costar. She puts an arm around her waist and brings her mouth close to hers. She places her other hand on the nape of her neck and caresses the soft tangled hairs that stick out from beneath her powdered wig. She is about to kiss her when the director's shout interrupts her approach.

“What in the hell is wrong with you?” The director slaps his copy of the script in exasperation. “Didn't I tell you to put your hand on her ass? On her ass! And that's a sensual kiss? Doesn't look sensual to me. To me it looks depressing. Look, I'm depressed.” He makes a face that's hard to decipher. “And what's wrong with your face? You don't feel well? Because that's the face I make when I have heartburn.”

Iris Gonzalvo turns somewhat to look at the director with a defiant face. A face so full of defiance and contempt that for a moment the director and the other members of the crew on the low-budget production stare at her in terror. Someone even goes so far as to take a terrified step back.

“I'm acting,” she says to the director. “Trying to live the situation as if it were real. I'm sure there are other ways that she and I can communicate besides putting a hand on her ass.”

The director stares at her for a moment with a perplexed face. Then he frowns. Then he stands up. His subordinates seem to move slightly away from him in that incredibly subtle way that subordinates have of giving the impression that they're moving away from their furious superiors without really budging from their spots. The director's face is literally red with rage. Especially in the upper part of his cheeks.

“Communicating?” he says. “And how the fuck do you plan on communicating? She only speaks Polish. We had to use fucking sign language to explain to her that she didn't have to do an enema before the shoot.” He moves toward his assistant, who seems to have backed up a few steps more, or perhaps shrunk in size, and who is now hugging a copy of the shooting plan in such a way that any armchair fan of psychology could see is a clearly defensive gesture. “I don't care if the boss got you this job. Find me another girl the same size. And get this one out of my sight. Send her upstairs to the boss.” He rolls his eyes. “I can't believe that someone can be incapable of acting in a movie where the only thing they have to do is show their ass.”