There are films that seem to have a natural connection with architecture, but there are also movies that have unexpected connections with this discipline. Take for example "Paradise Hills", directed by Alice Waddington and released in October in Spain and the United States (and now available on digital and on demand).
The film revolves around a sinister rehab or reform institution located on a remote island. Young and rebellious women are sent here by wealthy families who hope to turn them into properly behaved ladies, so that they can conform to the roles that have been chosen for them.
Uma (Emma Roberts) wakes up on the island without even remembering out she got there, and has some problems adjusting to life there, even though she meets some good friends, Chloe (Danielle Macdonald), Yu (Awkwafina) and Amarna (Eiza González).
Behind its fairy tale-like exterior, the island and its rose obsessed director, the Duchess (Milla Jovovich), hide something scary and dangerous.
Uma realises it when she is subjected to a sort of Ludovico treatment consisting in being strapped on a carousel horse suspended in the air and having to watch a disturbing holographic video of the suitor she has rejected to brainwash her into marrying him.
This story, set in a twisted Alice in Wonderland-like retro future with some horror nuances, could be filed under the dark and dystopian science fiction / Gothic fairy-tale category.
The costumes and accessories (check out also Uma's hologram pendant), designed by Alberto Valcárcel, seem to be inspired by a steady mix of anime and videogames (think "Final Fantasy"-meets-"Fire Emblem"), combined with works by digital surreal artist Ray Caesar and with assorted pop culture and fashion references (the Duchess's floral gowns call to mind Dior's A/W 2010 Haute Couture collection) .
Upon entering the institution girls must wear a white tulle frock or a corseted gown strapped with buckles that restrain the body.
There's more behind the pink velvet and white tulle, though, and above all behind the spa-like beauty treatments and yoga classes of this "center for emotional, holistic and sustained healing," as the Duchess describes it (or, as Uma calls it, "fascist boarding school").
There's also more behind these girls, who aren't happy Disney princesses, but frustrated young women, trapped in repressive gender roles and divided in social classes (Uppers and Lowers).
In a way such a film could easily be labelled as "dystopia for Young Adults" à la "Hunger Games", but beware of dismissing it as the locations of the film may enchant also older architecture fans.
The mysteriously surreal Paradise Hills residence is indeed a combination of two iconic places in modernist Spanish architecture.
While some scenes were shot at Cases Ramos in Barcelona, designed by Spanish architect Jaume Torres i Grau in 1906, and the carousel scenes were set in a Gran Canaria church, most of the exteriors (and the interiors as well) that regard the girls' residence and the reform institution, were shot at La Fábrica (The Factory) in Sant Just Desvern, Spain, and at the former residence of sculptor Xavier Corberó.
Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill found the cement factory in the western suburbs of Barcelona in 1973. Struck by its potential and by the extension of this 31,000-square-meter industrial complex that comprised 30 silos, buildings with underground tunnels, subterranean galleries and machine rooms, Bofill bought the World War I era structure and its grounds.
Bofill then started a long process of renovation to reinvent the place and turn it into a living space for his family and into his Taller de Arquitectura (RBTA) studio.
The renovation process was inspired by the Catalan Gothic style and preserved some of the industrial, brutalist and surrealist elements of this structure, including 8 remaining silos (turned into a workspace for Bofill's firm and connected with spiral staircases to the facilities on the other levels), a space known as the cathedral, laboratory for models (in the underground galleries), archives, a library, a projection room, residence and studio.
The structure was then completed with gardens with eucalyptus, palms, olive trees and cypresses. Ivy grows on its brutalist walls, but when the film was shot the plants were enriched with fabric roses, symbols of the perverse Duchess (something that connects this character to Alice's evil queen).
Quite a few sections of the film were shot at the labyrinthine house of the late Xavier Corberó. The latter acquired in 1967 an ancient house and plot of land in Esplugues de Llobregat, in the outskirts of Barcelona. The Catalan sculptor started developing it from 1968, a process that went on until his death in 2017.
The result is a large complex of houses that Corberó conceived as his residence, as exhibition spaces and as accomodation for artists-in-residence (Dali and Picasso were among the other visitors).
The structure consists in 9 buildings (with 25 bedrooms and bathrooms) covering a vast area (over 45,000-square-meter), linked with a series of courtyards and connected with around 300 Roman-influenced archways. The result is mesmerising, beautiful and obsessive.
The archways give to the building a peaceful rhythm with their curves, but they also create a sense of vertigo and make you feel as if you were part of an etching by M.C. Escher.
Corberó also created for himself a tower-like structure with glass walls that extended underground in the bowels of the building where a museum is hosted.
In the film the girls mainly live and move in Corberó's buildings: the brutalist setting was decorated in pink to give it more feminine notes, while a swan-themed bathroom was added to hint at the metamorphoses the girls will go through while staying at the facility, from ugly duckling to elegant swan.
Both Bofill and Corberó's buildings are used in fascinating ways in the movie, but Corberó's structure is particularly intriguing as it perfectly strengthens that feeling of displacement, entrapment and confusion felt by the girls inhabiting the sinister pink brutalism of Paradise Hills.
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