It’s just like going to a movie – you lose yourself for a few hours, but you always have to come back. The experience is the same for the viewer as it is for you.

Of course. And that’s basically what the movie’s about. The movie’s about this need that we have to either make stories or to hear stories so that we can go into the stories for refuge and run away from our own. It’s fascinating, the process of identification – every time we read a story, we identify ourselves with one of the characters.

It’s a fascinating process how we can get into a story, whether it’s a movie or a book; we can lose ourselves and also identify with one of the characters, especially because we’re always asking, wondering, what we would do if we were in that situation. It’s something that we ask ourselves that nobody else hears. The interesting thing is that we identify ourselves with that different character and we can live another situation that is not ours so we can be escaping and experiencing things that might not ever happen to us. And it’s a way that we can know each other and ourselves better, by being in someone else’s shoes.

Even Lucia’s situation – she’s the most innocent one because she’s not the one who created any of the tragedies, but still by reading Lorenzo’s story, she identifies herself with the daughter who wants to sleep with the stepfather. She identifies with the daughter but if she had to choose between the love of daughter and mother and passionate love she would’ve taken passionate love because she doesn’t realize that you can resist love, especially when it’s passion. But in reality the daughter chose to love her mother and leave Carlos, and that’s what Lorenzo was basing his story on. But Lucia’s choice would’ve been different – that is, if we believe Carlos, whom Lorenzo believes.

Right – I believe Carlos, too. (Laughs) The theme of running away but not being able to escape is all so incredibly tragic, especially when you say that was what you were trying to do yourself. The last time you and I spoke was when Lovers of the Arctic Circle came out and you said you wanted to next make a romantic comedy. I’m wondering what happened with that – why did it turn so tragic instead?

Yeah, that’s true! (Laughs) Well.... In the first stages, it was always realistic and almost comical when I began writing Lucia’s story. But during the process I felt like I was walking on air, not going to a specific place, and I got rid of so many things that I felt like I was floating in limbo. At first, there were very comical situations at Elena’s house with Lucia and Elena and Carlos and another character who’s not in the film anymore, but I didn’t want to know anything about their past lives, about who they were before – there was a sort of agreement between them that they would never talk about their past, and all that time they would just make up pasts for themselves.

It got to the point when it was just so up in the air that that fourth character had just come to create this like chaos between them. (Laughs) It reminded me of the Coen brothers films – I respect them very much and think that they’re great, but I wondered what I was doing, where I was going with this story. When I got back to Madrid from the island, I started to write about the pasts of these characters and it just happened automatically, I was writing so fast, not for anything but just to know myself what their past lives were. In the past, I discovered Lorenzo, the writer, who is now a very important part of the story, and that’s how I ended up where I am now.

It seems like that you discovered yourself when you found the writer Lorenzo in the story.

Yes, of course – and no as well. (Laughs) At first there was a lot of me in Lorenzo but I didn’t want to be involved, so that was only at the beginning. But there’s a lot of me in Lucia as well. See, I first wrote it as a novel and then made it into a screenplay, and the novel was called Lucia: A Ray of Light. “Un Rayo del Sol” [“A Ray of Light”] is a Spanish song – it’s all throughout the film – and that was what Lucia was when she was on the island. Then I wrote about the sex, and that was a totally different direction. So I had made two different screenplays and after a few months I decided to mix the two stories together and see what would happen.

The good thing about combining them is that I was able to make Lorenzo a bit different from myself. (Laughs) When I was rehearsing with the actors, Tristan Ulloa [who plays the part of Lorenzo] would look at me for inspiration and I had to keep asking him not to do that – I didn’t want to be part of it at all! So now the character is more like Tristan the actor than myself, which is much more appropriate and which I’m very happy with.

I find it amazing that you wrote a novel before turning it into this script – is this your usual process of writing? Have you written other novels?

In another film of mine, Tierra, there is a character who thinks he’s an angel – sort of half-dead and half-alive. I wrote a journal for the female character to see things from her point of view. She’s a 17-year-old girl who’s very worldly, very physical, and wants to do whatever she wants, while the male character – the angel – is completely the opposite of that. There's this whole contradiction between the female who wanted to stop being as sexual as she was, and it was interesting for me to see what she would write in the journal and what she would do; I enjoyed learning her more in that process. I’ve done this process – not in the screenplay but in other forms like this journal – twice before and I do it anytime I feel the screenplay isn’t letting me know enough about the characters.

There seems to be so much psychological ...not quite analysis, but examination, in a very Freudian way in many of your films. They feature a lot of dreams and symbolism, and its especially evident in Sex and Lucia. Did you study psychology at all or conduct research into the subject?

Well, I’m a doctor. I became one because I wanted to be a psychiatrist - that was always my intention. When I was 15 I started making silent short films and they were very psychological, but I never showed them to anyone nor will I ever show them to anyone! (Laughs) Also, when I was 14 I was in love with my neighbor – she didn’t like me and I started writing a script that went on for four years while I was madly in love with her. (Laughs) It explored the psychology of the whole thing but it’s another thing that I will never show to anyone.

This whole idea of escape and flying away was also a big part of Lovers of the Arctic Circle. Since I was very young I wanted to be a psychiatrist; I read a lot of Freud, a lot about dreams and dream analysis because I found that fascinating. Even now that I’m a filmmaker I still carry that with me. I also love philosophy - I read a lot of Nietzsche and was very interested in all that, especially the romantic philosophers. So, with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist I went to medical school for six years. But while I was doing that I also started working as a film critic for a newspaper in San Sebastian, and I kept working on my short films in October when I had recess from school. When I graduated and got my diploma as a general surgeon – which is funny because I get dizzy at the sight of blood – (Laughs) – I decided I wanted to explore being a director and making films instead. So I’m not a psychiatrist, I just make movies.

But what you do now as a filmmaker is a different type of psychiatry – you’re still practicing in a way. It might even be more effective because you reach more people doing what you do.

Hmm.... Yeah! The main thing I realized was that I myself was not strong enough to be a psychiatrist, to have to deal with mentally ill patients, and I don’t feel comfortable with the situation right now that a lot of psychiatrists are in where the only intent they have is to give medicine to people and sedate them. I realized I could not handle that every day. When I was young, I had this ideal image of what psychiatry was, and the closer I got to getting to be one I realized it was not the reality. So I decided to be a filmmaker so that way I could still have this idealized image of things.