By Jessica Mansfield
It may be his directorial debut, but does that really count when you’ve spent ten years making a film? In the making of his film, Gloria, which follows the career and scandal of Mexican pop singer, Gloria Trevi, director, Christian Keller, spent years researching and interviewing the star and her entourage to tell as accurate a story as possible. “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” Keller tells FilmInk. “I naively thought that I could pull this off within a year, and then it took ten. It was a steep learning curve, but it was a great experience in the end.”
And for this film, getting the story right was crucial. In 2000, Gloria Trevi and her manager, Sergio Andrade, were arrested on charges of corrupting minors, in a supposed sex cult involving dozens of teenage girls. The details are hazy, but for Keller, accuracy and impartiality were very important. “We wanted to tell the story as we saw it, after years of researching the facts. It was very important to us not to judge or take sides, and to let people make up their own minds,” Keller explains. “I joke that being from Switzerland made it easier to be neutral, but it’s true. Having an outside point of view without any prior knowledge was very helpful. And I had the help of one of Mexico’s most renowned screenwriters and journalists, Sabina Berman.”
As an icon of Mexican pop culture, Keller wanted to showcase Gloria’s huge musical influence in Mexico, choosing songs of hers that perfectly represented this. “Her lyrics are very specific, and they represent Mexican culture in a unique way,” Keller exclaims. “We wanted to tell the story through her music, and let her songs function as a gateway into her inner world. Gloria always wrote and sang about what she was feeling and experiencing at any given moment of her life, so that made it easier for us to choose the appropriate songs.”
Yet despite the film’s distinctly Mexican feel, Keller sees this story as more universal. “I connected with the story on a human level,” he describes. “For me, it’s always been about a young girl who was looking for love, and that very innocent thing took her to a very dark place.”
Gloria plays at The Cine Latino Film Festival, which screens in Sydney (August 9-24), Canberra (August 10-21), Adelaide (August 11-24), Brisbane (August 12-24), and Melbourne (August 17-31). To buy tickets to Gloria, head to the official website.
