Thanks to Ale for translating this interview with Il Mare director Alejandro Agresti:

INTERVIEW WITH ALEJANDRO AGRESTI
"I'm living a dream"

In Hollywood, the argentinean director confirmed that will start to film "Il Mare", with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock

-Pablo O. Scholz.

70 million dollars, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in the main roles, music composed especially by Prince, Warner Bros production. What more could Alejandro Agresti ask for?

"I'm living a dream", said in Los Angeles the director of Valentin, in a rest from the rehearsing he was having with The Matrix star. "We are in pre-production for "Il Mare" for two weeks now, and we are going to film it in Chicago", reason why he is traveling from a city to another, rehearsing with Reeves and Bullock in Hollywood and supervising the design production in Chicago. "The movie is based on a Korean production, Siworae, and deals with scheme of time and space. I changed some things, and now we are working together with David Auburn, Pulitzer Prize Winner, who co-signed the script.

Reeves will be an architect and Bullock a doctor when "in the original movie she worked making voices in movies and he in another thing, so now it's different", says Agresti. The ambient is different, it's so much more worked, being him (Reeves) a very famous architect, around Frank Lloyd Wright. "Visually it has much to do with Chicago, that it is a wonderful city."

The plot indicates that the characters lived in the same house with two years of difference, and for a strange reason "they share the mailbox of the house." In the beginning, she leaves the house "a very peculiar one, that we constructed on a lake. Suddenly he finds the letter, dated of 2005, when he is in 2003. First they think that it is a game, every day leaving a letter to each other, and they are approaching day after day, and what it seems illogical has it's own logic: you discover that they met once."

The idea to reunite Speed stars eleven years later was not deliberate. "No. I was meeting different actors. Bullock wanted to know me two months ago in New York, and accepted. And once I had Sandy, I met many actors until the day I met Keanu. He is such a fan of "Valentin", saw "Un mundo menos peor", both like the way I direct, and then I said to the studio: "I have both". "That they were both in Speed was a coincidence. In the beginning Warner worried if it was a good step or no." "It is not a comedy - he clarifies -, it's a romantic drama. One gives a touch of life and humor, but they are not comedy roles."

The rest of the cast is determined?
The only ones that are confirmed are they both (Sandra and Keanu). Another role goes to Jeremy Irons, the father of Keanu, and there are other three actors, who we are deciding.

The technical crew is a must. We have the director of photography David Tattersal (worked on the three episodes of Star Wars), the production designer is Nathan Crowley (from Batman Begins), the producer of the film is Doug Davison (the same one of Dark Water, the new Walter Salles movie). There would not be Argentineans in films. "it will be filmed in twelve weeks, beginning in march 14 in Maple Lake, 25 minutes of the center of Chicago. The predicted date of opening is the first trimester of 2006. I am finishing in 10 or 11 of June, and the edition I will do with Kevin Tent, the same one that works with Alexander Payne (Sideways) in Chicago edition offices while I film, and when we finish the running we will be transferred to a farm near San Francisco, property of George Lucas", he confesses.

The work rhythm, he says, is "maddening, by the tools we have. It is a very original film, you can say to everybody. It is very rare that a big studio turns it in one of its super productions. I have an enormous privilege, the power to work with so much freedom, that's what the studio is giving to me. This is industrial cinema, but a very good cinema is being made here ", trusts him. Agresti comments that he has a great contract "with Warner Bros. to produce and to direct my own films, that is like Alfonso Cuaron (last Harry Potter) signed with Warner". Agresti already had commented to Clarin that he was a friends with Alexander Payne. "I really like him very much, but he does not work for Warner. One that have his own producer within Warner, and I have the emotion of being able to relate to him, is Clint Eastwood. And a month ago I had the luck to seat to see with him the first copy of Million Dollar Baby ", says on the possible Oscar candidate.

He continues dreaming wide-awake. "After so many films, I believe that in the last years Hollywood offered things to me and I took them as I could. Here many directors were immigrants, from William Wyler to Billy Wilder. It is not easy to come and to make anything, the dream is that one, to be able to count with the tools and to make good cinema, good stories. I hope to be able to do it."

Agresti says that he does not have time "to feel strange". "Yes sometimes I think how beautiful would be to be able to share all this with my friends, but I always have my friends in mind and imagine them seeing the movie. Your work is not made only for you, you do it for the ones you love. "