Exclusive: Rodrigo Cortés on His Movie, Love Gets a Room, and Filmmaking Inspirations

Director Rodrigo Cortés, who was born and raised in Spain, first made his mark as a young filmmaker when one of his short films won 57 awards in its film festival run, showing that he was a young talent to watch over the next couple of decades. Crossing over from Spanish movies to English cinema, Cortés has gone global. When his 2007 movie The Contestant came out, it only proved that he was one of the rare auteurs of cinema within his generation. In 2010, his movie Buried, starring the Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds and only Ryan Reynold, gained critical acclaim after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

Now, Cortés’ newest film, Love Gets a Room, is finally ready to appear in movie screens across North America after film festivals and a run in Spain’s theaters. In a story that takes place in the midst of the Warsaw Ghetto in the 1940s, an acting troupe tries to perform a play for those who would come. But behind the scenes, there’s a lot more going on with the actors, and the world of the play continuously seems to blend in with reality. The production of the musical is live on-screen, creating a double-sided take on performance when it comes to the cinematic and the theatrical elements.

We were joined by Rodrigo Cortés to discuss Love Gets a Room ahead of the United States release date.

The Beginnings of a Story

Love Gets a Room is very unique in its approach, as it utilizes a musical theater format to tell a different kind of story side by side with the events happening to the actors in that play. When asked where this idea originated from, Cortés mentioned the other writer involved with the screenplay: the German writer David Safier. “[He] wrote the first draft while doing research for one of his novels in Warsaw. [He found out] in those days, they had this play running in the winter of 1942, and he found it fascinating to try and imagine the story of a group of actors trying to present this play under the most absurd and darkest circumstances.” He continued,

“I read the first draft, took over from there, did my own research, and I kept thinking […] To me, this is basically the story of a group of actors. This was the most important thing to me: people doing what they know, feeling what they have to do, even under the most unlikely circumstances. When an actor does something like this in real-time, nowadays, the circumstances are very different. If the light goes out, they keep going on with the play.”

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The film opens with a single take in the Warsaw ghetto that spans eleven minutes. Cortés had a specific reason as to why this happens. “We start on the outside, cross the whole ghetto, and then get into the theater. Then finally we got to the stage with no cuts — we wanted this to be a physical experience. I wanted to tell the audience this didn’t only happen in a theater but in the ghetto, which is something you need to believe. You can have the actors say something, but you need to see how the ghetto was, how dangerous it was. I thought doing this in one take could make the audience physically feel that.” He added:

Melting Down the Barriers of Theater

When casting for the movie, Cortés mentioned that the actors involved with this film had theatrical backgrounds. The roles required they had to dance and sing on the stage, and the music in the film was actually done live. “We didn’t do playbacks,” Cortés explained. Earlier in the interview, he discussed how he had wanted the experience of the movie to be felt in the viewer’s bones–this plays a role in that. As the plot progresses through the movie, the characters, although they’re on stage, begin communicating with each other through the lines in the musical.

“The emotions get mixed,” he explained. “When you see the play from the outside, as a member of the audience, you just see the play. When you get onto the stage, you see the subtext, what the real people are actually telling each other and what they feel.” As the characters communicate with each other in different languages, the discussion of the film’s overall cinematic language arose in the conversation.

Related: Love Gets a Room Review: An Incredibly Moving Film Set in the Heart of the Warsaw Ghetto

Cortés believes the cinematic language was created beforehand. “In this case, it was especially important. You have an actor on the middle of the stage, they are singing and acting, we don’t cut. You go with him to the right wing, and then their performing quality changes. They are the real person again, but the song keeps on playing, then they come out. So you have to synchronize that.” He later added,

A Small Preservation of History

The musical presented in Love Gets a Room was a real one once performed in Poland during World War II. Cortés confirmed that the lyrics had survived, but the original music was lost. “We had to translate it into English, and we needed a composer to reinvent that music, to reimagine it in the tradition of the Polish stage in the thirties…we didn’t have the reference of the music, only the history. It had to be bright in contrast with the outer world.”

When asked about the constraints of working within such small spaces, Cortés mentioned Buried, which had starred Ryan Reynolds. That film takes place inside a coffin. “Compared to that, this environment is pretty big in comparison. I never thought of the restraints, but what the story needed. I never thought of the limitations, so I used steadycams or crane shots. I followed the story.”

Upon reflecting on the making of Love Gets a Room, Cortés brought up, “I don’t want to be cheesy, but it was a very warm experience. We felt we were doing something that was really unique, and you could feel this warm energy of people trying to get this idea done in a very moving, fascinating way… We had rehearsals at the theater for two weeks, and the funny thing is, we only practiced the play. So when they didn’t need to think about it, we could do the nuance. This is probably my best, most moving, and satisfying professional experience so far.” For audiences and crew alike, it seems like Love Gets a Room is all about the emotion, even in the production process.

From buffalo 8, Love Gets a Room is out in theaters on June 23, 2023 and available on demand beginning June 30.