Isabel Coixet

Isabel Coixet was born in San Adrián de Besos, Barcelona, ​​on April 9, 1962. At a very young age, cinema began to form part of her life, since her grandmother was a box office seller in a theater in her city. The films that Isabel Coixet watched prompted her to think about telling her own stories, something that would be helped by the gift she received at her first communion: a super 8 camera. But time would have to pass before her fans became turned into a profession. Time in which the future director graduated in History at the University of Barcelona, ​​and where her love for cinema led her to collaborate with the magazine Fotogramas in conducting interviews that she herself later described as “horrible”.

Apart from cinematographic fiction, his best known facet, Coixet stands out as a publicist. She was the creative director of JWT, and has shot spots for well-known brands such as Kellogg’s cereals or the Pepsi soft drink; she has also supported with her audiovisual talent the political campaigns of the socialist party in Spain; In addition, with her company, Miss Wasabi Films, she has shot documentaries and music videos for artists such as Alejandro Sanz . In 2010 she made an impression on her giant Miguelín doll for the Spanish pavilion at the Shanghai Expo.

But going to the cinema, 1989 was an important year for Coixet, who made her debut as a screenwriter and director with Too old to die young , a film shot in Spanish –it should be said of this Catalan director who shoots films with the air of American independent cinema– with the one who achieved a Goya nomination for best new director. She could not imagine then that the day would come when she herself would be responsible for the television broadcast of these awards gala.

In 1996 he shot his second fiction feature, Things I Never Said to You , and he did it in English. The imprint of his advertising ‘background’ is noticeable in the aesthetic proposal, but at the same time we are facing an intimate story, the ins and outs of the breakup of a young couple. The good reception leads him to try a second film in Spanish, To those who love (1998), but here comes the disappointment, this narration from the time of disgruntled love in Galicia fails to attract the public. There is a break in the fiction length of almost five years, but the wait is worth it, Pedro Almodóvar produces My life without me , a look at death through the eyes of a woman – wonderful Sarah Polley– that he knows that he has a short time to live, that he does not want to reveal it to his loved ones, and that he makes a list of what he must do before he dies. The film also addresses a subject, motherhood, which is of particular interest to the filmmaker. Goya for the best original screenplay, it is again a film in English, a language with which she repeats in 2005 with The Secret Life of Words , a new intimate drama with Polley ‘again’ plus Tim Robbins, the director’s best work, which takes place on an oil platform, where different characters lick their wounds from the past, accidents and very painful experiences. Coixet would highlight in his film “empathy, that mysterious capacity to feel the dilemmas of the other as their own, whatever they are, which they are capable of developing, manages to break all the walls -of silence, of cynicism- that exist between them” . The visual and sound packaging is fascinating, intoxicating for the senses. The film won two Goyas, for directing and script.

La Coixet has set its own bar too high. His professional solvency is unquestionable, and he is right when he assures that he is “not very self-satisfied”, although the public image he gives sometimes produces rejection, his accelerated way of expressing himself, with a studied hysterical point. After signing segments for the films Paris, je t’aime (2006) and Invisibles (2007), his next feature lengths disappoint a bit. Elegy (2008) adapts a novel by Philip Roth , and tells of the love affair of a cynical university professor with a former student; the cast – Ben Kingsley , Penelope Cruz , Dennis Hopper– It is solvent, but the emotions do not flow as naturally as other titles. Whereas the debt of Map of the sounds of Tokyo (2009) with the cinema of Wong Kar Wai is too evident, and the apprentice remains well below the level of her teacher. The story of the murderer who falls in love with her victim who is an expert in wine in Tokyo, Rinko Kikuchi and Sergi López , is excessively artificial, her aesthetic preciosity drowns out the hardly credible drama of the protagonists.

Coixet is very interested in the female characters in his films, and affirms that “there is a dominant cinema in which there are some stereotypes – alluding to the feminine ones – that make you want to vomit”. In this sense, she, who is a mother, assures that “we have to educate so that our children know where the stereotype is and so that they see where the reality is, since if the children have education and formed criteria they will be able to see whatever and Your point of view will not change.