Matthew Porterfield's Cuatro paredes is exclusively showing on MUBI starting April 13, 2021 in the Brief Encounters series.
Cuatro paredes was conceived and shot over the course of four days in summer 2020. I like to think of it as an affirmation of language and its ability to transcend the physical frame. Over the course of the film, Karla (Bárbara López) sings a song, reads a letter aloud from her aunt, listens to three voice messages from her best friend back home, and ultimately delivers a monologue on creativity, cinema, and the fragility of the imagination. The words she shares and receives integrate disparate texts that felt particularly resonant in this year of increased isolation.
The scenario surrounding the text is simple. I lost my father in 2019, so I created a character who has lost her father, too. Despite this absence at the heart of the film, I wanted to depict the connections we find with loved ones across distances and physical planes. Though Karla is the only character we see on screen, she is never alone.
The transient, impermanent, evolving essence of “home’’ was also a theme. In this sense, Cuatro paredes is in direct dialogue with my 2015 short, Take What You Can Carry, and perhaps with all my previous work. The title is a reference to the four walls of the home, the four walls of the frame, but also the words of George Jones when he sings, “I need four walls around me to hold my life, to keep me from going astray.”
In January 2020, I moved to Mexico. Here, I find myself listening to language in a new way, paying close attention to words, but also to what surrounds them, like gesture, intonation, and the space between phrases. When the contiguous relationship between what I see and what I hear is disrupted, I begin searching for meaning everywhere all at once. In making Cuatro paredes, I wanted to approximate this experience of listening for the audience.
I found the process of sketching a scenario in two days, then shooting in two days, gave me room to breathe. Like so many, I’ve been developing projects in a kind of limbo this last year, so an opportunity to make something, even with very limited time and resources, was liberating. The cinematographer had a camera and some anamorphic lenses. Bárbara was in town for a week. I didn’t really know where to start or what I wanted to make, but there were some simple things I thought I’d like to see and hear, so with their encouragement, I put some ideas down on paper.
The scenario looked like this: Bárbara driving in car, singing/not singing, Balloon? Image goes dark as she enters tunnel (keeps singing over single title card) Angle on tunnel, car emerges (>camera) Reverse on car entering Playas de Tijuana (<camera) Angle on Bárbara looking out at ocean from behind (w/mask and w/out) Angle on Bárbara’s face (looking out? Looking down?) Angle on sand squirrels?
Coverage of Bárbara entering house/reverse with suitcases Barbara reads note from aunt (to herself/aloud) Insert on note Bárbara goes upstairs, sits on bed with Kitty, sings to Kitty Phone buzzes, Bárbara stands, listens to voice memo (also coverage for longer, second memo) Bárbara lays down, puts Kitty on chest and delivers monologue (to cat? in response to voice memo?) *Would this work at night?
>>> need something in-between A mirror? Something on the balcony? Does she shout something?? Something in el pasijo de los gatos, i.e., cut-away to animals Does she watch the squirrels?
I gave all the text to Bárbara the day before the shoot. I’d never asked an actor to recite a monologue before, so it felt like a risk. But Bárbara’s ability to take three pages of uninterrupted dialogue, approximately ten minutes in length, and fully integrate the text with her person and her personaje, was remarkable. That monologue was the last thing we shot. We were losing light, but I remember watching her perform it for the first time as the camera rolled and feeling so much excitement and energy in the room. I feel the same excitement now when I watch the scene unfold. Her words seem to be forming in midair always.
One more thing I’ll mention is the cats. My girlfriend and I looked after a house in Playas de Tijuana for a couple months during quarantine and became very close to the five cats who lived there, though only four of the five appear in the film. Kirita, the cat on the bed who Karla sings to, died a few weeks after the shoot. This film is dedicated to her, my number one puff forever.
