By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The grim coming-of-age tale has its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest this month.
Isaac Ezban, whose previous credits include the well-received THE SIMILARS and PARALLEL, delivers what is arguably his most frightful film yet with PARVULOS. Scripted by the director and Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes, it’s a story of survival in a blighted post-viral world focusing on three siblings: the older Salvador (Farid Escalante Correa) and the younger Benjamin (Mateo Ortega Casillas) and Oliver (Leonardo Cervantes). Left to fend for themselves without their parents in a house deep in the woods, they must not only forage for necessities but deal with outsiders who may or may not mean them harm. And they’re also keeping a particularly horrifying secret that jeopardizes their existence. PARVULOS has its debut Fantastic Fest screenings on Sunday, September 22, followed by an encore showing on Tuesday, September 24; search for the movie at the festival website for details.
RUE MORGUE caught Ezban’s engrossing and shocking film at its world premiere at this past summer’s Fantasia Film Festival, and spoke to the filmmaker about his inspirations for what proved to be a long-aborning project. One might assume that PARVULOS’ post-pandemic setting was inspired by COVID-19, but Ezban tells us, “The script was originally written in 2016, before the coronavirus. Originally we were going to shoot it that year, then we were going to shoot it in 2018, then in 2020. All this time, we went through casting processes, we found kids for it, and then the movie didn’t happen. And then when the pandemic happened, I said to myself, ‘I need to put this into my movie. I have this story about the end of the world, and now the world is really coming to an end.’ Some people criticized that and told me I shouldn’t do it, mainly in the distribution and marketing areas, because they felt audiences don’t want to see stories about COVID, and it hasn’t really been done; you don’t see TV shows with people wearing masks and stuff. It’s like, people want to skip that in fiction. But I felt that the story isn’t really about that, and I just put a hint in there.
“It’s funny; the premiere audience at Fantasia was an amazing crowd, and they responded at the right moments. This movie has many different emotions, and they were shocked, they were laughing–and when the corona references came up, they actually found them funny. Like when a character says, ‘Yeah, this is because of a badly tested vaccine,’ people were laughing! I was like, that’s not supposed to be funny, but I guess they enjoyed the irony of it all. It’s not a big part of the movie, though, just a small thread that connects it to the real world.”
In general, Ezban was inspired by, and sought to address, real-world concerns and emotions when making PARVULOS. He describes it as a genre-themed coming-of-age story, and says, “I’ve always loved those kinds of movies, and I’m a great admirer of the creators of coming-of-age genre films, like Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams and Guillermo del Toro, who directed what for me are the two best coming-of-age movies. So I wanted to make one where I put children in difficult dilemmas that would be hard even for an adult. On top of that, I believe all the directors I admire have done a film about the end of the world, and I wanted to make mine. I really like to take ideas that already exist, like a time-travel story or a zombie story, and twist those concepts into something new and original.”
Another influence was the original GOODNIGHT MOMMY, which Ezban caught on the festival circuit back when he was first contemplating the idea for PARVULOS. “That movie really opened up my eyes,” he recalls. “I saw it without knowing anything about it, and I was so impressed with this story of two children living on their own, and they don’t know what’s up with their mom, and we discover little by little what’s happening. So combining all those thoughts, I came up with the idea for PARVULOS.
“It’s a film that has become personal for me for many reasons. First, as I said, because I love coming-of-age films; I think we can all relate to those, and I love those stories within the genre, because coming of age is like discovering another world, and the genre is also a great portal for discovering other worlds. Then I made it more personal by making it the story of three brothers, and I come from a family of three brothers where I’m the oldest. Then it became even more personal when I became a father, and I said to myself, ‘No, this is what the movie’s about. It’s about parenting, about fatherhood, and about how the children become the parents and the parents become the children.’ As time kept passing by, I made THE EVIL EYE, my previous movie, which is like a sister to PARVULOS, because it’s a female-driven coming-of-age story. And I thought that with PARVULOS, I’d be doing a very male version.
“And then later on, I realized that the movie is all that, but it’s also a story about a family, the lengths to which we go to keep a family together, and the values of family and trying to save a family, which is something I can relate to at this point in my life. So it’s interesting how the projects that take so long to get made keep changing as you change as a person, and your life changes, and sometimes those wind up being the best movies.”
