João Canijo is no stranger to Oscar campaigns, having already made two films that Portugal submitted for the international category: In the Darkness of the Night (submitted in 2005) and Blood of My Blood (2012). When we sit down to talk to him at the Viennale, he chuckles and almost cringes when we bring up the awards factor. “I’m not looking forward to the campaigning, I’ve done it twice already and I think the film should speak for itself. Besides, these things cost money and Portugal doesn’t have that much to spend.”
For most of the year, Bad Living has traveled on the festival circuit with its companion piece, Living Bad, which tells the same story (the happenings at a Portuguese beachside hotel) from a different vantage point (the staff in one film, the guests in the other). Does it feel weird to only have to focus on one half of the diptych when it comes to Academy events and screenings? “The experience is richer if you see both films,” the director concedes, “but Bad Living can be enjoyed on its own, as we saw in Berlin when it won the Jury Prize.”
Both films premiered at the Berlinale in February, and back then Carlo Chatrian explained that the content and style dictated the sections in which the two halves were shown, with Bad Living playing in Competition and Living Bad in Encounters. Canijo agrees with that assessment: “Each film was where it was supposed to be.” Did this also influence the mood of the screenings? “Of course. The Encounters one, which doesn’t take place in the Berlinale Palast, was much more casual and relaxed.”
As for the creative process, Canijo drew on his own experiences with hotels to tell this story of a family that is basically trapped in the workplace. “We associate hotels with getting away from it all, but for the people who work there, it’s almost like a prison.” Is that where the two titles comes from? “Nice observation, but that wasn’t intentional. The Portuguese title of the first film, Mal Viver, comes from the French mal de vivre, which is a suitable description for the hotel staff. I mirrored it for the second film, which then became Viver Mal.”
While the screenplay for Bad Living is original, Living Bad is loosely based on three plays by August Strindberg. What was the reasoning behind that? “As I get older, I appreciate Ingmar Bergman’s films even more, and by association the works of Strindberg, who was Bergman’s main influence. In re-reading them, I realized they would fit what I was setting out to do with the stories of the hotel guests.”
What was it like to coordinate such an ambitious project, with two films shot simultaneously? “We tricked the actors. The crew always knew which movie we were working on each day, and by changing the camera angle we could move from one to the other.” And how much did the cast know about the overall scope of the story? “The actors playing the guests knew all about the other film,” Canijo explains. “The ones playing the staff either didn’t know or didn’t care,” he adds with a laugh.
It is often said filmmakers don’t have time to watch other people’s films when they’re at festivals. Canijo confirms this: “Because I had two films to present and promote, I was twice as busy. My cinematographer managed to see something in Berlin, and I envied him.” So what’s on the list once the festival and awards season is over? “Oh, the list is long. Radu Jude’s new film is at the top. I like his work very much.”
