Grimmfest Interview with Rendez-Vous writer/director Pablo Olmos Arrayales

Grimmfest’s first Easter Edition kicks off on the evening of Thur April 1st, 2021 with our preview night, and then continues across the evenings of 2-5 April, with a series of feature film premiere double bills with supporting shorts and Q&As with the cast & crew of each feature. In addition, there’ll be an exclusive pass holder double bill and an ARROW double bill both of which can be accessed any time across the weekend.

There’s so much to watch you won’t have time to get bored this Easter!

A young woman meets up for a date with a man she has met online. But is he who he seems? And is she?

How did this idea begin, how did the project develop?

We shot a short film back in 2017, and that short film played well in general festivals. So I met again with my friends and producers, and I ask them if they want to shoot another short film or if they wanted to shoot a feature film with the same budget.

That was in the summer of 2018, and obviously the three of us have been shooting a feature film, but the restraint was the budget, I told them.

I had to write something to be sure, as a single set and then just one day so it can be just as easy as that, as cheap as that. So we jump, right. The technique was the first thing we have because of the budget constraints.

Then I start thinking about a story that was that allows me to be a fly on the wall, you know, just to have just this camera floating around. I’ve always been very afraid of online dating. I never have a date online. So I put that there. I put all the problems we have in Latino America like violence.

You know, all that kind of stuff that we live with here, and that’s mainly how we formed the project.

How did you get into directing?

Well, it’s been a while now.

When I was in university, I wanted to be a reporter at first. I’ve always loved writing. I always have a book on my desk. I was reading so that part of me was always interesting in writing. But in my last year of university, I had a professor who gave us a cinema class. But it wasn’t cinema class. It was just him talking about his favorite movies and his passion for cinema is what I guess went into my DNA or my atoms. Suddenly I realized, oh, maybe I should make movies instead of writing.

My mother and my father are really fans of David Lean. I’ve always been watching movies, but not in the kind of thinking that I want to be a director. So I went to live in Spain, to study filmmaking and I worked there as an editor. From time to time I shot a short film, and it took a while to be a commercial director. So I was waiting tables in a restaurant. I saved like six months of my salary and then I shoot a short film and so on and so on until I got that opportunity to jump onto the commercials.

Then I went to Barcelona to study script writing. I wrote a feature film and I went back to Mexico like five years ago. I started to look for the first production company to raise money for that.

Well, everybody told me it’s good it’s great, but it’s very expensive.

So then I realized I have to write something really cheap that I could afford myself.

I was going to ask how the one-take concept came about, but you’ve covered that! So how easy was that to do, for example how much rehearsal time went into this?

I believe we were really naive.

We say yes, let’s do it like a single take. Then because we went scouting, looking for the house, the first thing we got was the museum permission. So we have the museum and then we started to look for the right house around there.

Why do we have the house? I thought, well, in one day we can block the whole story.

I already had a storyboard that we took to the house.

So we started blocking the movie and suddenly we realized that this is going to be hard, this is going to take us longer than we thought.

So I said we’re going to need three weeks of rehearsal because it’s not only the actors who have to memorize the movement, it’s also the DP who has to memorize the movement.

Also part of the crew who are hidden inside the house – make-up, effects, the focus puller, et cetera. They are hidden. So everybody has to learn the choreography of the movie. It took us about three weeks of rehearsal.

We made three attempts in the beginning, but they mess up just in the beginning – in the museum. That gave me time to just record it and try it again.

But the only complete take is the one you saw.

How would you sell RENDEZ-VOUS in one sentence?

I like the way it’s been described, this is the anti-Valentine’s movie, so I guess that will be my one sentence.

Were there any influences in how you approached RENDEZ-VOUS?

Yeah, absolutely. I guess I had three direct influences, the first one is PSYCHO – in the way you watch, like the first 30 minutes of that movie and you think this is a heist movie going one way. Then it turns 180 degrees. So that was my intention of just acting like a rom com, the way it develops.

Second one is again Alfred Hitchcock and this is SUSPICION, one of my favourite Hitchcock movies where you’re not always sure about a character.

The last one is WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? The whole movie I was thinking, she’s the bad sister. She’s about to start something and then…oh, twist. So those were my main three influences.

We can’t wait for cinemas to be open again, what film would you love to see the guys at Grimmfest screen to a packed audience?

I would love to see, and it’s one of my favorite horror films of all time – JAWS. I would love to see JAWS with a teenage audience because I know they haven’t seen it. And that’s a great movie.

What’s the best horror film you’ve seen for the first time recently?

Recently, definitely HEREDITARY, I think it’s a masterpiece.

I love that film, actually, when I was in the cinema, I was thinking to myself, I’m watching a classic movie right now, you know, that movie is amazing.

Suddenly I was feeling like if I were back in the 70s watching THE EXORCIST, you know, the feeling of watching a timeless movie, a classic movie. I know he’s going to influence a lot of people.

What have you got lined up next?

I’m working on two projects. One is not official, but I’m negotiating the remake of RENDEZ-VOUS in the United States, and for me to have the film, to direct it. Hopefully that will work out.

The other one is a film about this podcast host.

So it’s going to be a movie about just one character, I wanted to do something different from RENDEZ-VOUS but also to raise the stakes. So just having one character and to keep the people entertained. I think it’s going to be hard, but I want to try that.

It’s good to challenge yourself.

Interview by Sean Luby. Find out more and book your tickets HERE and check out the trailer below: