The premise of Argentina’s Ricardo Darin’s latest feature, “Therapy Done Right” (Lo dejamos acá”), world premiering at the San Sebastian Festival, is deceptively simple: A pragmatic psychoanalyst loses faith in conventional methods and starts pushing the boundaries with his patients. Everything seems to be going well until a writer (played by Diego Peretti), struggling with creative block, walks into his office.
The dark comedy, which Darin’s Kenya Films produced, is having a special screening at the fest before it streams worldwide Oct. 16 on Netflix. He tapped Hernán Goldfrid, who directed him on “Thesis on a Homicide,” to helm the feature.
Darin and Goldfrid spoke to Variety at the tony Maria Cristina Hotel in San Sebastián:
Ricardo, you play the psychoanalyst who rejects an award at the onset, stating that Argentina has the largest number of psychoanalysts in the world and yet the percentage of Argentineans with some form of mental health issue has doubled. Is this a fact?
Yes, and I think it has something to do with the mix of cultures that shaped Argentina – Italians, Spaniards, Jews, Arabs, Germans… – really, a bit of everything. And I think that’s part of where it comes from. Argentina also embraced psychoanalysis a long time ago, and it’s worked for us. In many ways, it’s worked really well.
Everyone has mental health issues. A lot of people around the world do – they just don’t realize it. They think there’s something else causing it. I think it’s worth clarifying that, because otherwise it might give the impression that Argentinians are the only ones with mental health problems. That’s not the case.
But I also know there are more psychoanalysts in Argentina. There are a lot of psychoanalysts compared to other countries. Why is that? Nobody really knows. Because people have been drawn to studying it at university. Argentina has some very good universities for psychology and sociology.
Darín: We like to laugh at ourselves – it’s good for us. It’s a kind of balm. Yes, it’s healthy. And what about psychoanalysis? That doesn’t necessarily make us laugh, but the first step is to put into words what we think is happening to us and then compare that with what’s actually happening. And those two things can be very different.
How did this project come to you and your company, Ricardo?
What were you hoping to achieve with this film?
Hernán Goldfrid: I think what we were really looking for was disruption. We talked about it at one point – the idea of being disruptive, unpredictable. We wanted the story to constantly put you up against the unexpected.
Darín: And we take that to the extreme, because that’s what my character does – he takes everything to the extreme. And at that point, it becomes crazy, completely outrageous. He even goes into people’s homes.
Goldfrid: It comes from this need our character has, a very pragmatic need to do something. Our character says, “You have to get your hands dirty.” And that’s really what drives him: getting directly involved in each of his patients’ emotional struggles, taking a completely hands-on approach.
And what were some of the challenges you faced during the shoot?
We shot the film last year, and filming in Buenos Aires was also about making the city feel like another character in the story. The city runs through the film, and through the characters, and that was very important to us.
And I imagine you also spoke with psychoanalysts and other professionals while developing the project?
Darín: Yes, especially our screenwriter, Emmanuel. He spoke with several of them, and I think he still does.
Goldfrid: You do a lot of research but the film is really about people. So the research was also about that – about human vulnerability. In that sense, it became much more personal. It was about getting into the emotional world of each of us. We did have some great conversations with professionals, but what we really wanted to explore was people. So part of the research was simply observing what happens to each of us when we’re faced with situations like the ones in the film.
Darín: Hernán and I talked a lot. We laughed a lot, too. At first, we spent a lot of time laughing about the character, his extreme situations and the way he thinks. And little by little, the character started to take shape. Hernán was the one who kept everything in check and decided where to push it further and where to hold back, because it’s very easy to go too far.
What’s next for you, Ricardo?
And how do you feel about the current situation in Argentina with all the cuts to subsidies in the audiovisual sector?
These days, it’s hard to know what’s true just by following the news—to tell the difference between the truth and a manipulated version of it. And that doesn’t just happen in Argentina; it happens all over the world.
There have been a lot of cuts, not just to culture, but also in other very sensitive areas, such as disability services. There’s also a lot of discussion around a bill concerning disability rights and services currently being debated in Congress.
