From the island of Puerto Rico, Carlitos Ruiz brings his feature film debut Maldeamores (Lovesickness) to the Tribeca film festival for its world premiere. Carlitos and his wife Mariem Pérez (who co-directed and edited the film) craft a humorous and touching film about the darker side of love, without becoming an overly sappy romantic comedy. After a successful premiere in New York, Lovesickness is quickly getting distributor attention while being snatched up by film festivals around the globe. We had an opportunity to talk with Carlitos about throwing roosters into showers, getting Benicio Del Toro involved with the film and steamy elderly love scenes.

Looking at your childhood (Dad was a photographer, Mom was a theater actress), it seems like you were destined to become a filmmaker. How did you get your start?

When I was fifteen years old, my brother (Luillo Ruiz, who’s also the producer of Lovesickness) took me to a film festival in Puerto Rico [and] I saw a Cuban film for the first time. My father used to take us to movies all the time, but we would see commercial movies… when I went to see this Cuban film, I saw people going through a lot of problems. They were poor and struggling through life, but it was done in a dark comedy environment and they were laughing at their problems. At the same time, it didn’t have a happy ending or anything like that, but it moved me. I decided, “Oh my god, that’s what I want to do for life.” I want to move audiences the way this director moved me. Because he created in me, something in my heart, that I wanted to stand up and fight for something. I wanted to go and start changing things in my life, and I realized how powerful the medium was. I wanted to be part of it and create social changes through cinema, but at the same time, entertain.

Do you remember the name of that film?

It’s a Cuban film called Adorables Mentiras (Adorable Lies).

Then you went to school for photography in Puerto Rico right?

Yeah. I was doing photography since I was a kid, because my father was a photographer and I was always playing with his cameras. When I decided I wanted to study filmmaking, I realized that there weren’t real film schools in Puerto Rico. The only way I could go to an international film school was – you know that the competition international is really big – so I needed to have a portfolio. One of the ways to have a portfolio, if you don’t have a short film, is to create a portfolio of pictures with an idea and a story behind it. That’s when I went to the university and tried to develop a strong portfolio so I could apply to a film school.

And you went to film school in Chicago right?

I got into Chicago and when I went to study art or photography, I did it in an art school in Puerto Rico. It was the art department of the University of Puerto Rico. I came into contact with all the artists from the last century and I was blown away by it. So, when the moment came for me to go and study filmmaking, I did it in an art school… with a concentration in filmmaking. I was in love with art, I was in love with film, and I decided to combine both.

How did you get into doing music videos and commercials after school?

I had to do a short film, a thesis work in order to graduate… I did a strong short film that was in competition in several film festivals – and won awards. So, I came to Puerto Rico to receive an award at a film festival and I had a lot of job offers doing music videos and commercials. So I started working right away.

Did you bring a lot of your experiences with your wife Mariem into the film?

Well, a lot of our friend’s relationships! [Laughs] But there’s a lot of us in the film, like the kiss with the kids, was kind of like the first kiss with Mariem… and we were a collective of friend’s that got together to create the screenplay. You’ll see this all comes from real stories. This is the grandmother of somebody, and this is the mother of somebody, and this is our friend, and all these people are characters we know from Puerto Rico.

We wanted to create several different short stories that were only connected by the theme. But when we started collecting the ideas, we realized that we are Latin Americans and Caribbeans – we are really intense in our way of love, but we are more intense when we are looking for love. That’s how it became Lovesickness… the masochist’s search for love. But how can you portray that, and at the same time show that it doesn’t matter how difficult it is, how claustrophobic, how masochistic the search can be, it’s all worth it for that moment of bliss when you realize, “Oh my god, I’m in love.”

It was interesting that you focused on the darker aspects of love but then you were still able to bring some humor into it. Like with the guy who hijacks a bus to get the woman bus driver to marry him.

Yeah… we also didn’t want to point fingers at any character. All the characters have a soul, all the characters have a heart, and they’re searching for something that they believe in. So we didn’t want to say this is bad, this is good, we didn’t want to point fingers at them. We just wanted to show that they were struggling to get something that they believe in. All the characters… are treated with a lot of humanity so you feel for them, but when you look at what they are doing it’s absurd.

Any moments of love sickness in your own life you don’t mind talking about?

[Laughs] It was more when I was young. I would always fall in love with my friends – with my girl friends. I fell in love with a friend of mine and in the end, after two months she said, “I don’t think we should be friends.” I was always searching for love, but was only finding friends.

We were immersed in this film for three and a half years, and we were also raising a kid at the same time. My son is the same age as the screenplay – when we finished the screenplay he was born. So we went through a lot because you know, your first kid, your first movie, and you’re trying to be the best both times, and you were in a relationship and both of you worked together… We went through a lot together, and that’s why Mariem says we survived. So I think we’re going to be together for a long time.

How was it casting the film?

We did the casting together with a casting director from Puerto Rico (Patricia Alonso), who is one of the most amazing casting directors that I’ve worked with. Now that we’re talking about this, I forgot about saying something about her at the premiere, and I’ve been feeling guilty for three weeks now! She was amazing. We had meetings about what we wanted from the characters, and her eye was really amazing for the casting. She always made us remember what we were looking for… the aura of the character. We weren’t looking for specific physical details… It’s like the old lady; we didn’t think [she would be] anything like what is actually there in the film right now. We thought about another [type] of person, maybe like Rita Moreno or something… like a hot [older] woman. When Silvia Brito came into the casting room, she said two lines and… we said, “This is her!” We felt like she was strong and she’s also sweet. So I knew audiences were going to fall in love with her.

That was a great scene, when she throws her ex-husband on the bed… it was humorous to see the kind of love scene that you would normally see with younger people happen with the elderly.

We treated it with a lot of respect, and we knew that people would maybe laugh, but we didn’t want them to laugh at the theme, we wanted people to laugh because they were into it! And that’s how it happened, every audience in the festival was like, “you go girl!” They were clapping, and there were standing ovations… When they kiss, people go crazy. You fall in love with the characters through the story, and by the end of it you really want to hug them. When she (Silvia) was there [at the Q&A], everybody wanted a piece of her! “Can I sign your panties?” [Laughs]

Really?!

[Laughs] No, no, I’m kidding… Also what I was saying about casting, we wanted a particular feeling of acting in this film, so we really worked with a specific formula and it worked. Having every critic, every reporter and the audience saying, “I fell in love with the characters. They’re so real. I can relate to them.” Not only that, but the universality of the theme and the characters [too]. People from not only Latin America, but from England were saying, “That’s my grandmother!”

So this formula you’re talking about with the casting. You’re referring to looking for the spirit or the aura of the person instead of a physical feature?

Yeah, we also wanted the characters to surprise us – to give things back to us. We wanted the characters to come to life in front of us. The actors were fighting with us, well not fighting but struggling because… like the mother of the little kid (Teresa Hernández) was saying, “Hey, I don’t want to feel like I’m the bad guy here, He’s the one who [cheated].” and then Luis Guzman was saying, “Hey, I love my kid. I did what I did, but I love my kid.” So they were defending their characters because they were becoming their characters and that’s amazing.

The cast delivered some great performances. How do you like to direct your actors?

A lot of conversations with them, we played a lot, we did a lot of scene playing. I was trying not to go back to the lines in the screenplay a lot. I was playing with the characters and we would play with scenes that can feel like something that you have in the screenplay but I wouldn’t touch the lines in the screenplay. We would talk a lot about their characters until they became the characters.

Would you improv scenes as well?

We would do improv, but we’d do that in the rehearsals. On the actual set, they had a lot of liberty, but the screenplay was so well written that 95% of the lines that are in the [film] were in the screenplay. So it wasn’t a lot of improvisation like that [on the set]. The improvisation came in the rehearsals, and if we wanted to change anything, we’d change it in rehearsals. I wanted to respect the screenplay because it was amazingly written. Another nice thing is that people say, “That wasn’t written. That woman talking that way, she’s so real that it can’t be written.” But it was written, every single line was written.

How was it shooting the rooster in the shower scene? Did you use a fake rooster for anything?

We had a trained rooster. We threw the rooster [into the shower] but had a fake bed inside the bathroom. So he goes into a really safe area. Then the character (Miguel Ángel Álvarez) wanted to hold the rooster. He said, “Hey if I hold it, it would look like it’s biting me.” There was no abuse to the rooster, but it was real all the time. There’s also scenes with the rooster that didn’t go into the film… the rooster was a big part of this story. There’s like three scenes with the rooster that were taken out. At the end we had a scene with the old guy who kills the rooster with his car without noticing. We poured blood on the rooster, and [after] we cleaned him, he was pink for a week! [Laughs]

The beginning scene with the couple fighting in the car over gum was hilarious! It was such a typical situation that anybody who’s been in a relationship with someone could relate to… How the smallest annoyances start the biggest fights!

It actually sets the tone for the film. Anybody that watches the film is going to change for life. Anytime that they have an argument in their car, they’re going to think about this film. If you really study all the stories, they’re really claustrophobic. There’s a lot of things in a car, there’s a lot of things inside houses, we wanted to [audiences] feel this “island” claustrophobia. Every car in the film is an island. Every story is an island. There are 4.5 million people living on this island (Puerto Rico). Everybody has gone out with everybody else… that has a lot to do with our identity and how we struggle and how when we go for something we have to get it. Something that Benicio Del Toro said was, “Guys pay attention, because film can become Puerto Rico’s national sport!” What he means is if we want to do it, we’ve got to do it really well. We want to do it good. And that’s how we win so many Miss Universe contests… We’re little, but we want to sound big. When we want something, we go for it!

With the story of the couple [in the car], they’re fighting and when you’re the audience you feel like, “Where is this going because nobody’s going to stop!” We really respect the comedy, we do dark comedy but we respected that as real. You’re laughing at something you shouldn’t be laughing at, but you laugh because it’s absurd and you know that thing can happen. We didn’t want to be funny ha ha; we really wanted to be more serious than funny in that way. We took comedy really serious [laughs], is what I’m trying to say.

The look of the film was beautiful. Can you talk a bit about your approach to the look of the film? What format did you shoot?

We shot it on Super16… we wanted to feel the grain of the film; we wanted the picture of the film to go with the feeling of the characters. We wanted to make a film that felt real. We wanted to camera and the production design to work for the character, to work for the scene. We didn’t want the actors to work for the camera. We worked a lot on the production design and it was like the idealization of reality… you’ll notice the wallpaper in the house and the fridge is full with flowers… I don’t know if you noticed but the name of the woman is Florita (flowers in Spanish), and everything was flowery design. We didn’t want it to be too much so the production design comes in front of the characters we wanted to create a marriage. Also we come a lot from references of Italian neo-realism, Latin American cinema and European cinema, and we wanted it to feel real, crude, but elegant at the same time.

How did Benicio Del Toro get involved as executive producer of the film?

He was actually the one who told us, “You’re ready to make a long feature film guys. I want you guys to go do it, and if you do it, I’m going to go on the journey with you.” Benicio Del Toro was in Puerto Rico, we met him on the street and told him hey we’re doing this [short film] and you should take a look. So he took a DVD of the short film, went back to L.A. and he called us two days after and said, “I loved the way you guys look at things, and I really want to work with you guys. So what are you doing now?” We told him that we were developing a workshop for youngsters to study filmmaking and giving them the opportunity to create a portfolio so they can study abroad. He was in love with the idea. He came back, he helped us with that and he actually gave us grants so we could give it to the kids for free. Right now we have six students in NYU and they have never taken a class in filmmaking, only our workshop.

So we started a professional friendship [with Benicio], we admired his work, and he admired our work and when he read the script [for Lovesickness] he fell in love and said, “Ok, let’s do this.” We became friends because of admiration and that’s the way you work in this industry, you become friends and then you start working together.

So after the workshop he said you guys were ready?

In the last workshop that we gave he said, “Guys, you’re ready. You’re kind of late to start doing your feature film… You have to do it this year. Write it and I’ll be your executive producer.” But really we thought he was saying [to use] his name but he really got into the casting, he went to some of the casting with us, and he was really important in the post production process. So you can feel Benicio’s sensibilities through the film also. When Benicio saw a cut of the film he was crazy with it. He was stomping his feet on the floor, laughing out loud, he was in love with it.

That must have felt good to see him enjoy it!

Yeah …because you make films for your friends, [the ones] that you know and the ones your going to meet later. And having Benicio enjoy the film that much, we knew that we made something good… we knew audiences would love it. This film has had a lot of angels – because to make a film, you need a lot of people that fall in love with it – but one of our greatest angels has been Benicio Del Toro.

What gave you the biggest headache during production?

I used to do like four to five commercials a month. You work really intensely for two weeks in the preparation of a commercial but when you go to a set, in a day you shoot that thirty-second story... maybe sixty-seconds. But then you go to a long feature film project and you have to shoot five minutes every day. So in that moment you realize that you need to let go. You did all your work, and now you need to let the film surprise you. You know we shot the film in nineteen days… but what I learned is that you have to let your film talk back to you. You have to let the characters talk back to you.

How was your world premiere at Tribeca?

We always knew that we wanted to go to Tribeca because we wanted to have the audience with the broadest ethnic background… and we wanted that international kick for the world premiere of the film… It was amazing! We were invited to a lot of festivals, Italy, London, Amsterdam and having Japanese people laughing at your film, having people from Lebanon laughing at your film, is amazing.

Did you get any bites yet from distributors?

Yep. I don’t want to talk about that… Things are happening.

Is there a chance for a US release?

Yeah… right now, we’re focusing on U.S. distribution and it’s going really, really nice. So we’re in the conversations right now.

What kind of advice would give to any new filmmakers out there?

Always to maintain their focus and knowing why they’re becoming a filmmaker. They have to know that if they’re becoming a filmmaker, it's because they’re dying to tell stories. Everything is about the story. It’s not because they want to be in magazines or not because the want to be on TV or anything like that. They want to live in the art, not to be recognized as an artist. So that’s really important. Tell the stories that move you, because you’re going to be moving people.