Maria de Medeiros – Maria sans frontières
Maria isn’t like “La Portuguesa” in Carlos Cano’s famous song. She thinks life is wonderful. With no real nation to speak of, her homeland is the Pessoan and poetic language that is her constant companion. She describes herself as estrangeirada (foreign-like) but Maria de Medeiros is someone who isn’t confined by national borders.
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We find her within the bare walls of a pavilion in Serpa, dressed as a Ukrainian, in a break in the filming of Business, the first feature film by childhood friend, Serge Tréfaut. The blonde locks tied back in a ponytail and the daring clothes don’t match the character we’re looking for. Nor did the candid Fabienne who whispered in the ear of Bruce Willis, in Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994), nor did the rule-breaking Anaïs Nin of Henry & June (Phillip Kaufman, 1990), nor did the solitary Maria of Três Irmãos (Teresa Villaverde, 1994), nor the “actress that sings” and that recently embarked on her second musical adventure. Not in the slightest! The woman that gets in the car and sit smiling on the back seat, sheltering from the rain, to give this interview, is the Maria de Medeiros that Portuguese journalist and author Miguel Esteves Cardoso described 20 years ago in Kapa magazine: “From one moment to the next, she goes from the Virgin Mary to Mary Magdalene. She is innocent and sullied. 13th-century and 20th-century. Girl and woman. Maria de Medeiros is whatever Maria she’s thinking of.”
Is it different getting on stage to sing rather than act?
The stage is sacred. Whether it’s to sing or act, the mechanism that is set in motion is the same. I always work with music in my head and when I’m only saying the words from a text, I follow their musicality. I also like opposites, the words in music.
Aren’t languages a problem for you?
I have been lucky enough to act in six different languages that I know well and I’ve seen that each one makes us change our character and take on a different attitude. For example, speaking French implies an almost Cartesian distance, while Spanish forces us to be more direct. I like those differences and I exploit them a lot as an actress…
And what about Portuguese?
That’s more difficult, because it’s my language. Each word has more stories, more senses, more affection; it’s less innocent and more charged with emotion. I don’t really know how to describe my character when I’m speaking Portuguese, perhaps because I identify with it. I have that Pessoan notion that my homeland is my language. I think that Portugal is an idea that’s always with me and which defines a major part of my identity.
When did you realize that you could and wanted to sing?
It was very difficult for me to take that step because I’ve got great musicians in my family, my father and my youngest sister, Ana, who is a violinist and composer. I remember thinking that music was their territory and that I wouldn’t dare chance my arm in it. However, it’s a form of expression that’s always been there in my life. In films, they’ve often asked me to sing and I’ve been involved in many musicals in the theatre.
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And why did you decide to take the risk, after all?
It all started with Brazil Year in France (2005). There were a lot of celebrations of Brazilian culture and, of course, Brazilian music. What happened was that I left the shows a little bit frustrated, thinking that certain things were rather superficial. The music was good, the lyrics were magnificent, but the French didn’t understand them very well. Something remarkable was lost in the process. Perhaps, a good example is Chico Buarque, whose lyrics are as good as the music.
So…
So, the idea of a small show in which I sang in Portuguese but translated Chico’s lyrics arose. For the French audience it was something quite new, there had been some standard versions, but people didn’t realize how rich the music really was. It was then that the idea for a record through Universal occurred. Then there were a number of tours that took us to peninsulas and continents, like now, with this new record. In those concerts, I started to highlight Portuguese music and great artists like Zeca Afonso, Sérgio Godinho or Amélia Muge, and that’s how the core of this album came about.
Was music a crucial step for you as a person?
Music inspires happiness. There are two great inspirations for happiness in life: one is having children (Maria has two daughters), people become happier, something happens… the second is music and Brazilians know it. It’s possibly one of the societies where music is most shared by the people. The day-to-day proximity with music that doesn’t alienate, that builds us, that identifies us, that creates communion. And I think that this is the great purpose of art: creating communion. When it exists to distract us, to blind and alienate us (one of the problems with highly industrialised art), it doesn’t fulfil its fundamental role. The opposite occurs with Brazilian music, the lyrics are important because they question society, human relationships, helping us think together.
Who is your audience?
The audience is rather varied; we played in Mozambique, in Angola, in São Paulo, in Rio, in Italy, in a number of Spanish cities, like Madrid and Barcelona. The audience is almost always Latin but varied at the same time.
Looking back over your career, do you think you could have been anything other than an artist?
I could have been a journalist. Perhaps, because my mother is a journalist and I’ve always seen her work at close quarters, which I found fascinating; particularly during the period after the Carnation Revolution (restoring democracy to Portugal in 1974). Because of her work, she has always been connected to the major figures of the revolution and that was certainly what led me to make the film Capitães de Abril.
What country did you find when you arrived in Portugal in the 1970s?
At that time, I was a little Austrian girl, I liked order and every in its place. I arrived here and it was total chaos, so my first reaction was one of fear. There was a lot of physical contact and when our parents took us to the demonstrations, we had to kiss a lot of people. I adapted, little by little, as I started to make friends (basically, making friends is creating our own space within a country).
How has this constant travelling between countries influenced you as an artist?
It was very positive, we were lucky. Some people think that children should grow u pin a stable environment, with lots of rules. With us, it was the exact opposite. A very nomadic life, lots of travelling and contact with other cultures and different people, great uncertainty…
Do you think that this feeling of not really belonging anywhere helps you forget yourself and construct your characters?
Sure, to some degree I became less attached to an identity, a territory, an emotional geography. On the contrary, what I like is crossing borders.
And does the fact that you’re simply called Maria also help?
(Laughs) At the time, when my parents decide to cal me just Maria, this caused a lot of problems because they said it was a servant’s name. Nowadays, I’m happy to be just Maria…
How did you become an actress?
It was because of Serge (Tréfaut), who I’ve been friends with since I was eleven, who was always applying for things (even something for cleaning teeth). We’d done theatre with Philippe Fridman, a great teacher who had a passion for philosophy and theatre. But it was Serge who told me: “We have to apply to the Conservatory”. It was a miracle we got in because there were three thousand candidates for 30 places. Surprisingly, I got in and he didn’t (laughs). That forced me to make a choice. At 15, I’d already done Silvestre, by João César Monteiro, although I wasn’t convinced yet. It had been an interesting experience and acting with Luís Miguel Cintra was quite something, but it was only in the Conservatory that I realised that fate was pushing me that way, so, I gave in…
You’ve worked with a long list of directors, including Chantal Ackerman, Phillip Kaufman, Bigas Lunas and Manoel de Oliveira. But there’s one name that rather curious: Quentin Tarantino. How did you meet him?
Like it says in the song by Lenine, “everything by accident”. We met at a small independent film festival in Avignon, where people were presenting unusual films. He was there with his first film, Reservoir Dogs, which I thought was brilliant, and kept in contact. I think he was interested because he’d seen Henry & June and that why he hired me and then Uma (Thurman).
Were you aware that you were making film history?
What was revolutionary about Pulp Fiction was how bold, daring and different it was to the usual Hollywood fare. He was completely against all that, the script was 150 pages thick, of past, present and future, it was like a chronological puzzle. But I never thought that such a sophisticated film would attract such a wide audience.
At the time, I think that all of us were expecting you to go to Hollywood…
That was never part of my plan. It was normal for someone like Joaquim de Almeida, who lived in New York and had a lot of contact with American society. I don’t. I’ve spent my life travelling around Europe and I identify more with European cinema.
Is your suitcase always ready? What do you pack?
Strangely enough, packing and unpacking is a nightmare for me. There are some basics that are virtually never out of my suitcase, but I don’t have travel charms or “objects”. Neither do I have any particular ritualss, but I like to read a book that has something to do with the place I’m in. For example, I read Ulysses and Dubliners, by James Joyce, in Dublin, and when I stopped reading the book it felt like I was still there inside. The same thing happened with The Volcano Lover, by Susan Sontag, which is set in Naples, or when I’m reading Fernando Pessoa in Lisbon, it’s like walking around in Pessoa’s shoes…
What do you like most about Portugal?
To be frank, it’s the rissoles (laughs). But then there are other important things like the culture, the poets and artists or Portuguese equestrianism, which I find fascinating, family, friends… I like Portugal a lot.
What do you like least about Portugal?
This is true of other countries and it’s prejudice. Perhaps because it’s a small country, it’s sometimes a bit isolationist. On the latest album, I sing “Paz, Poeta e Pombas” by Zeca Afonso, which talks about a manic-depressive poet. Because there are various levels to Zeca’s lyrics, I think he’s talking about our country, in some way. There are manic moments of great euphoria and megalomania, like the Discoveries or the exemplary 25th April revolution, which is something I’m immensely proud of, and then there are depressing periods, where prejudice and various complexes are evident. It’s at these times that people get scared and criticise everything, they become sad.
20 years ago, Miguel Esteves Cardoso wrote something about a Maria de Medeiros that seems very relevant now. I’d like you to comment on some of the things he wrote…
I know which one you mean. It’s one of the loveliest things anyone has ever written about me.
He says, “Maria doesn’t have one face. She has a thousand.”
It’s true and that’s what my work is all about, recognising that our identity is found in a number of masks or characters we play. Here I am, dressed as a Ukranian, speaking Russian (laughs).
“Wherever she is, she’s always fine …”
I try. I don’t share the depressive side of Portuguese culture. I like cultures that celebrate joy, like the Spanish, Brazilian and African. Why be unhappy in life? My philosophy is being happy because life is wonderful and that’s why I sing “La Dolce Vita” on this album.
“She’s permanently a foreigner abroad”…
It’s true; I’m a typical foreign body. There are millions of Portuguese throughout the world and I identify with them, like those in the works of Eça de Queiroz. But that is perhaps one of the most interesting facets of Portuguese culture, their incredible curiosity about the world.
Do you live an ex-pat life in Paris?
I’ve got good friends in Paris. But… yes. I completely identify with the Portuguese who live outside of Portugal, that’s the truth (laughs).
Going back to Miguel Esteves Cardoso. “What she likes is what she’s doing now: everything at the same time… this way and that”.
It’s true, but what incredible is that he got everything right. When he wrote the article, i was very young. I bumped into him a few times in the club Frágil (at that time we spent our lives in Frágil), but I didn’t know him well, and it’s really odd how he guessed all these things about what would be my work.
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by Patrícia Brito
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