“Strange River”, Interview With Jaume Claret Muxart

Strange River, the first feature film by Jaume Claret Muxart, arrived at the 66th Thessaloniki Festival after a triumphant journey that began with its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, followed by Tokyo, and just before heading to the Black Nights Festival in Tallinn. Upon his arrival in Thessaloniki, the director granted us an interview that allowed us to delve into an outstanding film. Estrany riu recounts a family bicycle trip along the Danube, where young Dídac (Jan Monter) reveals the most sensitive face of adolescence: the exploration of identity and sexuality, love and desire, expressed towards a mysterious young man, Alexander, in a fleeting encounter.

The Genesis

Jaume Claret Muxart came to the shoot of Estrany riu after a long preparation process that lasted seven years, during which he shot three short films, as he confesses, “to learn how to build a collective film.” One of the short films is titled Los danubios (Die Donau, 2023), and this is its connection with the film that is currently enjoying great success on the festival circuit: “I started writing Estrany riu when I was 19. At that time, I was closer to Dídac’s age than when I finally shot it. I was studying at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE), and my tutor was Michel Gaztambide, the screenwriter of Vacas and Víctor Erice’s latest film. He asked me whether I had read The Danube, by Claudio Magris… so I started reading it, and I found it to be an overwhelming universe, with very beautiful, very dense passages, about the invented writer who narrates his journey along the river. The second short film I made in that period is the one about the Danube; it was born as an impulse. We were a team of five people, but I didn’t want to lose the enthusiasm of shooting during the summer.”

The director was concerned about the fragility of processes, about the potential impact that shoot could have on his feature project, and about the fear of losing the magic. “So we returned to the Danube, to the same places, but the characters and tone were different. It was no longer a fable told by a writer, a fugitive figure.” It was at this point that Claret Muxart began discovering elements such as the play of colors in the water —from the magenta and green at the beginning to the blue at the end— that transition, even if the chromatic transformation ultimately came from post-production.

The Water

Water, omnipresent in Estrany riu, is an eternal symbol in art, since Heraclitus. In the director’s case, it conveys constant transformation: “The Danube has a very strong symbolism, even a somewhat clichéd one, and I wanted to play with that, both with the idea of growth and with aesthetic and experimental exploration. It is a portal that allows you to play with the poetry of images, of sound… I connected water with the figure of Alexander.”

Sirens, Ondine… mythology is present in the film, especially in the construction of Alexander’s character. “One could think he is a very abstract character, that he doesn’t have much complexity, that he is more of an idea than an image, but the actor needs something to hold on to. We worked a great deal with the myth of Ondine; she is a tragic character, trapped in that river, she has a desire, but she is abandoned.”

It is impossible not to notice that the two young protagonists share a strange physical resemblance, although this likeness does not withstand close examination; nevertheless, they share a certain intangible quality that associates them. Alexander, the attractive teenager slightly older than Dídac, has that archetypal, even polyvalent, vessel-like dimension:

“Yes, he becomes whatever you want him to be, absolutely. It was about searching for the archetype, but when idealism becomes more real, more rational in the film, that is when his voice appears. That’s where disappointment emerges, perhaps fears. But there is something beautiful in what you say, the idea that they resemble each other, because I believe that was conscious —it’s a projection of life, of that moment of change, of that imagined ideal that ends up being created; it exists in his mind.

And at the same time, their bodies are very different: Dídac’s is more adolescent, more hunched, more shy. Alexander is two years older, he is more formed, and that shows in the way he walks, too. Dídac is shy, and I did not want him to lose that freshness, so we rehearsed less with him; I wanted him to retain those movements, somewhat Death in Venice-like. I looked at that film a lot, as well as Senso, to work on the choreography.”

It is interesting that Claret Muxart mentions Visconti’s film, as it is one of the associations that naturally arises when watching Estrany riu, despite the completely different subject matter. However, the way he films an adolescent body that has not yet found its place in the world —the physicality of inhabiting a liminal plane between childhood and adulthood— is one of the virtues of the film, and it aligns it with the Italian director’s work.

The characters’ movements are always meaningful; nothing is accidental. For example, the first encounter between the two young men, wordless and described only through movement, with piano music in the background, unfolds like a waltz without touching. “I worked with the actors as if I were projecting a choreography…,” the director notes.

There is also something of Desplechin here, as the director confirms: “I love Desplechin; in fact, in the masturbation scene we used Daphnis and Chloé by Maurice Ravel, which appears in Comment je me suis disputé… (ma vie sexuelle). During the editing, with Meritxell Colell, we would watch fragments of other films to relax, and we watched a moment from that one —we heard Daphnis and Chloé and placed it over the scene.”

The tension between the natural and the constructed

The natural landscape —the geography of the Danube’s banks that the family travels along by bicycle, just as the director himself did several times in his life— plays in opposition to architecture and built environments as a narrative relationship, a dialectic of spaces that transfers directly into the family dynamic. “The two architectural spaces that appear in the film were there from the very beginning—they were like buoys for me, from the first version of the script. I knew clearly that I wanted the encounters, choreographically speaking, to take place in those settings. My father is an architect, so there is also something of that in the film, something from my own experience, a language that feels familiar to me. I spent years filming for architects, and there is an exploration there between spaces and the strength of figures like Roland Rainer.”

Mystery and frankness

Dídac relates to his parents with a candid, almost childlike sincerity, wonderfully open, yet he still conveys a certain mystery that is difficult to explain; his way of interacting with his parents and siblings is fascinating. “In the film, we opened up many fronts. I portrayed a family that stems from the family I grew up in. I come from an environment of high cultural education—my maternal grandparents are painters, my uncle is an important designer. I have the privilege of having grown up in a family where summers were spent visiting art. Not only my close family, but also my uncles, my cousins. That summer, we went scouting locations as a family, traveling together and discovering all the places collectively. I think that is important, and I must acknowledge it. I am telling a story from that place. This film is my tribute to the education I received.”

This is the authenticity that Estrany riu conveys—something unique, something that pulls you in. “Exactly, the ambivalence between shyness and sincerity. Jan’s beauty is very powerful, but he is not only good-looking; he has an authenticity that comes from his personality. I myself still do not fully understand part of that mystery. He has a gaze that captivates you, and at the same time he is a very shy person.”

Architecture also becomes a protagonist here because, for example, the Ulm School is a semi-transparent space. “Yes, you can see everything from the inside and everything from the outside, the entire natural surroundings. It seemed like an appropriate place for that first encounter between the two boys. There is symbolism there, of course, but above all it is physical —a place where sound matters, where you can feel the movement of the branches, when they play the piano, when they run… And then there is the neighborhood of Puchenau, where nature overtakes the built environment. We liked the idea that as Alexander gains presence —as Dídac begins to desire him and the mother recalls her own past love— he begins to embody that memory. There is something about Alexander’s presence, about nature, that slowly absorbs that architectural space.”

An organic cadence

The rhythm of Estrany riu is sinuous, musical, tuned to the sounds of nature, to the flow of the water and the cadence of pedaling —everything remains in harmony. It is a film that is never in a hurry, yet never static, where the character of Alexander does not appear until minute fifty.

In Estrany riu, there is a scene in which the dissociation between sound and image carries both poetic and narrative force: we hear splashing that does not correspond to what we are seeing. The sound comes from Dídac’s feet in the water, but what Claret shows us is his torso. Environmental sound —birds, a ship’s horn, a passing train— blends with the original score by composer Nika Son, with classical music, with Ravel, and even with the two songs that open and close the film… it becomes a dance of the senses.

“I’m glad you mention that —and I always say it— that my influence comes more from dance and music than from literature. I’m a frustrated choreographer, in some way. Cinema allows me to create choreography, for example in the scene where the two boys look at each other. I planned it as a long take with a tracking shot. I began to imagine where one actor entered from, where the other appeared, I truly felt like a choreographer and I marked the rhythm through their entrances and exits.

As a child, I studied music for seven years —piano, of course— so my influence comes from there. It’s something that comes naturally to me. What was hardest was constructing the characters, giving them intensity, depth —that’s detail. That’s where Meritxell came in as co-writer, because rhythm does come naturally to me, and I can play with different rhythms.

Now I’m even considering the possibility of a film that alternates fast rhythm and slow rhythm —I’m very interested in speed. But as you say, here there is a cadence that has a slowness that is not heavy. I always took a phrase by Ermanno Olmi as a reference, which fascinates me: ‘In a stream of water, where the water slows, the two lovers look at each other and recognize themselves.’ I love that idea of water pausing and then running again.”

The excellence of Strange River‘s team

Claret Muxart does not spare words of gratitude for his collaborators on Estrany riu—in fact, throughout his entire career: “One very important thing is that we never make films alone. I’ve been building a team over the years, and I can say that the sound team for this film is an absolute privilege. I’ve been working with the sound designer Oriol Campi for seven years, and finding that level of complicity has been essential. Amanda Villavieja, the production sound mixer, is Isaki Lacuesta and Guerín’s sound recordist; the mixes are by Alejandro Castillo, also a collaborator of Isaki; and Jordi Ribas is Albert Serra’s dialogue editor. It’s a sound team that has achieved something remarkable.”

As for the images, the director also worked with cinematographer Pablo Paloma (Sacred Spirit, Chema García Ibarra, 2021): “He is a wonderful person, humble, someone I studied with. He has worked with Víctor Iriarte. We’ve known each other for a long time; I’ve collaborated with him my whole life—and the same with Oriol. In the editing room, with Meritxell Colell and Maria Castan de Manuel, whom I’ve worked with since I was sixteen, and with Sandra Prat, the art director, since I was fifteen. It is a solid team.”

Aesthetic References

The images in the film evoke the visual arts and painting, both in the way they are composed and in their motifs; for instance, we encounter Ophelia —although this was not something the director consciously sought: “I never thought of Ophelia, but it has been mentioned to me. Also the Sorolla-like tones, the nude bodies, the sunlight… and Monet, Impressionism… Even if the images may be impressionist, the editing is expressionist. I believe in an expressionist cinema, far removed from the boring naturalism we come from and that still persists in Spain. I really like French cinema from the 1990s: Assayas, Claire Denis, Breillat, Akerman.”

Perhaps also Les roseaux sauvages (Wild Reeds) or even Death in Venice… “Yes, Wild Reeds has an incredible energy, very fluid in the relationships between the characters. And, in addition, Jan has the mystery of Tadzio. I like that Alexander is not so mysterious —he is the kind of boy you would fall in love with at sixteen, but he is a projection.

In terms of painting, I think there is an influence from the German Romantics, Caspar David Friedrich… I believe we more or less had them in the notebooks I keep, but above all the influence came from my grandparents,” the director explains. “My grandfather was an expressionist painter from the same generation as Tàpies and Chillida —his work is very good. My grandmother was also a painter, more in the style of Paul Klee, so the use of color comes from them.”

The Actors

The casting process to find the perfect Dídac was long. Claret Muxart and Martina Roura spent more than three months searching, seeing over 800 teenagers until they found the debut actor Jan Monter. As for Nausicaa Bonnín, who plays the mother, the process was very different: “She is very good, incredibly generous —she became just one more friend. One condition I set for myself during the shoot was that we would all have dinner together every day after filming. We were already a group of forty friends; on Fridays and Saturdays we went out, we went kayaking… and Nausicaa joined in for everything. She wasn’t the typical diva who stays in the hotel doing her own thing.”

Truth and tone

Authenticity permeates every scene of Estrany riu, where the beauty of the images and the harmony between sound and music achieve a fluid, organic sense of reality. “This is very important to me. I’m also in touch with Mia Hansen-Løve—we met in Madrid. You know she is always searching for truth. Un amour de jeunesse (Goodbye First Love) was a reference for the editing; she speaks about adolescent love, where time sometimes speeds up and sometimes stands still. That film is built around those rhythms. In our case, the first part is quite fast, more so than the second. With María Castan de Manuel, we observed how she edits, and we see exactly what you were saying about harmony—how crucial it is—just like tone.

In five minutes, when you watch a film, you can tell if it has tone or not—and if it doesn’t, I’m no longer interested. Now I am drawn to playing with different tones within one, without creating dissonance. Estrany riu is a family film, a romantic film, and it also has a kind of twilight tone, of late summer turning into early autumn.”

We said goodbye to the director just hours before the film’s screening at the 66th Thessaloniki Festival, talking about future projects and hoping to see his next work long before the seven years it took for Estrany riu to arrive—although it was more than worth the wait.