Culture
31 May 05

Human Behaviour

Spanish husband and wife writing/directing team, Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri, have learned to live as a two-headed monster, putting all the drama on screen.

"The entire shoot was sickeningly harmonious I’m afraid,” apologises filmmaker Dominic Harari. “Anytime we had a straight creative disagreement there was always a third way to keep everybody happy. It’s a bit boring really.”

Damn. Watching the dementedly paced Spanish comedy, Only Human, it’s all too easy to conjure up images of a pressure-cooker production with Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri, the film’s married writing and directing team, edging ever closer to the divorce courts.
“We directed a TV film together before,” laughs Teresa, “and the producer had a bet on that we’d get divorced before the end of the shoot. We’ve been writing together for years, so we’re used to people telling us we’re crazy working together. You just have to put your ego aside and remember that this is business. If you’re criticising something, it’s not personal.”
“Basically, we had to learn to live as a two-headed monster,” interjects Dominic.
Belonging firmly to the same pathological lineage as the similarly amphetamined dark farces of Almodovar and Kusturica, Only Human, Dominic and Teresa’s Meet The Parents style debut sees Madridista Leni bring her Palestinian fiance home to her neurotic (surprise) mother, slapper sister, orthodox brother and an occasionally armed grandfather who barks about the Arabs he has shot. “If you have a child”, wails the devastated matriarch at Leni, “he’ll blow himself up.”
“Dominic is English and I’m Spanish, but we’re both of Mediterranean and Jewish stock,” explains Teresa. “So we’re used to having a lot of culture clash in our lives.”
“But we weren’t trying to make a political film,” continues Dominic. “Except in the sense that sometimes the absurd contains a good deal of truth.”
Since meeting in New York at university, Teresa and Dominic have been professionally inseparable, co-writing with comedy writer Joaquin Oristrell on hit comedies such as Novios (1999) and Sin Virginia (2001). Only Human, however, is their first big screen venture as co-creators. So who got to hold the megaphone, then?
“We both did!” they chorus. They weren’t kidding about that two-monster dynamic.

Only Human opens June 3rd and is reviewed next issue.