They have known each other since they were babies, both became actors, then sizzled together on screen in the Oscar-nominated Y Tu Mama Tambien. Eight years on, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna are two of Mexico's most prized exports, with their own production company and a new film – in which they co-star – released worldwide. But you'd never guess from meeting them, writes FIONA McCANN
IT'S funny how a fantasy fulfilled can turn into something almost run-of-the-mill. Like the one where you're in a hotel room with two of the hottest young Latin American actors in the business, except rather than a reprise of some steamy scene from their film Y Tu Mama Tambien, you're checking out their iPhone pics and chatting about football and kids.
Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna are two of Mexico's most prized exports. They sizzled together on screen in the Oscar-nominated Y Tu Mama Tambienback in 2001, while also notching up fine performances separately in the likes of Amores Perros, Babeland The Motorcycle Diaries(García Bernal) and Frida, The Terminaland Milk(Luna). Now they're back in the limelight with their new film, Rudo Y Cursi, already one of the highest-grossing films in Mexican movie history, and one whose posters now line London's subways and streets.
And they’re still both under 30.
So how come a conversation on a couch with Che Guevara and Harvey Milk’s gay lover seems so – well, normal? It’s not that, in the flesh, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna aren’t as winning as they appear on the big screen, even dressed down in T-shirts and jeans, with shaggy hair and the tired eyes of new fathers. It’s just that their appeal in person is less to do with smouldering good looks and more to do with the fact that these guys are funny, smart and palpably sincere.
Still, there’s no denying the charm: they are solicitous and flattering. García Bernal reveals in an early aside that he has an Irish ex. “When I came to London my first friends were from Ireland, and my first girlfriend was from Cork,” he recalls, before waxing lyrical on what he sees as a particular bond between Irish people and Latin Americans. “There is a connection there; who knows why?” Then it’s Diego Luna’s turn. He mentions that my first name is also that of his mother, who died when he was two years old. “That’s why I smiled when you came in,” he tells me. “You have a beautiful name.”
He talks of his first child, born last August, whom he was set to name after his mother. “Fiona was waiting there as a name, but then a boy came,” he says with obvious affection, and then immediately undercuts his own earnestness. “So we called the boy Fiono!” he jokes and García Bernal takes the cue. “Fionulfo!” he offers, and the two are off again, teasing each other with an easy familiarity that makes it hard not to warm to them.
This is how it goes with these two, who allow each other only moments of depth before quickly dissolving them into farce. It's tone not unlike that in their latest project, Rudo Y Cursi, a story about two brothers plucked from their Mexican village to become rich and celebrated soccer players, in which dark themes of poverty, domestic abuse and addiction are leavened by hilarious moments as its two stars work their chemistry on the big screen. It was no great stretch for Luna and García Bernal to play the brothers Rudo and Cursi: they have after all known each other since they were babies.
“The thing is we don’t have the official story about how we met because we don’t remember,” admits García Bernal, before Luna takes over. “Our mothers were close friends, so they managed to get us together pretty fast. He’s a year older than I am so he had to wait a little bit.” Bernal laughs. “Yeah, I had to wait. I didn’t know what to do! It was a terrible year ... you know, when you’re that age, time goes really slowly.”
Since their initial encounter, these two have been closely involved in each other’s lives, facilitated by the fact that their careers have followed similar paths. Both starred in Mexican soap operas at a young age and both proceeded to the big screen. Yet their personal and professional closeness may well be what keeps them grounded: neither will allow his friend to start taking this business of fame and success too seriously. Nor will they allow it themselves: when he catches himself answering questions in the first person plural, Luna is quick to laugh at his own presumption. “We can talk in plural all the time,” he says and adds with heavy sarcasm. “I’m entitled to talk about how Gael feels about an issue; I’m able to talk about his feelings basically. I know him better than he knows himself.”
In the film, directed by Carlos Cuarón who wrote Y Tu Mama Tambien, each of the brothers is consumed by jealousy at the other's success. In real life, Luna assures me, there's no such rivalry. "When we were teenagers, there was a competition about everything," he admits, recalling a basketball net that provided hours of teenage one-up-manship. "But we left that behind a long time ago, and I have to say that cinema is a great way to do it. It's a great rehab for those who spend their lives competing too much, because in a way it's a collaboration. It's never about you, it's never about just one. It's like football: it's never about who has the ball, it's about what everyone else is doing."
All very well and good, but cinema can also be a vehicle for public attention and deification. For García Bernal, in particular, the years since his first appearance in Amores Perroshave propelled him into the A-List, not to mention onto all manner of top-10 Hollywood heart throb lists. So how can he avoid being a little self-congratulatory: the man played Che Guevara, for crying out loud.
Perhaps by following it up with a project that brings him back down to earth playing a naive wannabe rockstar from the backwaters, who falls victim to his own hubris. García Bernal plays the Cursi of the title, who refuses to give up on his ambitions to become a pop star, despite his obvious lack of musical talent. The role required García Bernal to reveal his own shortcomings in the singing department, and he has no plans to capitalise on the surprise success of his nasal version of the song I Want You To Want Methat appears in the movie. "I will spare everyone from the joy and from the pain that me singing would cause," he says.
Yet though Cursi may pursue musical glory at the expense of his real gifts as a striker, García Bernal is in little danger of confusing passion for talent. Recent forays into directing with Deficit(2007) and a short segment of the collaborative project 8, entitled, The Letter(2008) do not signal a change of job description for the actor: if anything, his passion for acting has only been strengthened by the experience.
“It’s a joy to be able to live off what you like doing and to enjoy what you do and to be an actor is to play every night, every day,” he says.
“And then with directing, it just came along as a curiosity, to find a way of telling ... a story and discovering the grammar of cinema.” So he won’t be giving up acting? “I definitely don’t feel like a director, just that I want to direct every now and then. I don’t want to have a career as a director,” he says frankly. “I really don’t like the careers of directors really, their everyday life. It’s not my thing.”
As if acting and directing weren’t enough to keep him going, he and Luna have also set up their own production company, Canana Films, with Pablo Cruz.
“All of a sudden we found the possibility of being able to build something that could and in a way structuralise the energy that was around, not only the projects and the things that we wanted to do, but friends and other people who were trying to find a place to manifest what they wanted to tell,” says García of the genesis of Canana. “It’s not a production company as such. It works as another kind of thing. It’s a workshop thing.”
He is particularly proud of Canana’s involvement in the travelling documentary film festival Ambulante, an annual event that has been running since 2005. “It’s possibly the thing we’ve done outside of acting and maybe playing football that we feel incredibly proud of.”
Canana, according to García Bernal, is a new reference point for Mexican film, at a time when Latin American cinema has never been so strong internationally. "Ten years ago here you wouldn't have bee able to see a Mexican film other than in a tiny little festival," says Luna of the growing audience for such work. "Now this film [ Rudo y Cursi] is opening in 40 screens in the UK and it's in Spanish, and it's about a very specific context, it happens in a little town on the pacific coast of Mexico. I feel really proud that there is an audience for that."
Does he find being a Latin American actor limits him in the kinds of roles he is offered. “I don’t see why nationalities have anything to do with the power of a story. Very specific stories can say a lot to many,” he says. “I have had the chance to work with amazing directors and people I admire and I’ve travelled a lot with my work. I don’t see why I should complain. I’m really happy where I am, with the chances I have.”
For Luna, the universality of a story is what matters. “I’m used to reading subtitles since I was a kid. We lived close to the States and almost every film we watched was in English and it was not a problem to relate to them or to get hit by the story or to like a character or hate a character. So I think film is powerful and we’re lucky to be part of this time of film.”
We move onto other powerful, cross- border endeavours, namely soccer, which both actors play both on and off screen. For Luna, himself considered a heart throb by no small number of film fans, the vanity of certain footballers is a particular bugbear. “They spend too much time thinking of their new haircuts,” he says.
García Bernal goes one step farther: “I’m going to say a stupid generalisation, because there are amazingly intelligent and wonderful football players that end up becoming philosophers of football ... but in general, they’re pretty dim, you know?” Luna jumps in quickly, his expression dead pan: “Just make sure people understand that that’s just what Gael feels and thinks.” García insists on the last word: “Yeah, Diego thinks footballers are incredibly intelligent. Say it that way, yeah, that’s good.”
There is a childlike element to their teasing that makes it difficult to sustain any sober line of questioning. I am reminded of the fact that several female friends were sent into swoons of envy when I mentioned that this interview was taking place.
“And now you’re going to go back and say ‘nah, they’re not that great’,” says García Bernal when I tell him. Luna slumps with faux-dejection into the sofa at the thought. “Please don’t go back and say the truth,” he pleads. “Keep the mystery.”
is released today
A tale of two careers
2001: Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna co-star in the Oscar-nominated Y Tu Mama Tambien, written by Carlos Cuarón. This is their breakthrough film
Gael
2002: García Bernal plays Che Guevara in Fidel
2004: The Motorcycle Diaries is released. He plays, yes, Che Guevara
2006: Plays Santiago in Babel
2007: His first movie as director, Déficit, is a drama set in Mexico
Deigo
2002: Luna plays Alex in Frida
2004: Luna plays Enrique Cruz in The Terminal
2008: Luna (right) plays Jack Lira in Milk. Sean Penn wins an Oscar
2009
The pair co-star again in Rudi y Cursi, directed by their old pal Carlos Cuarón
** Rudo Y Cursi
