“Carte Blanche” is a harrowing thriller that explores Spain’s seemingly forgotten Rif War in Morocco, the innate dehumanization of conflict that spurs rampant killing and its impact on the country’s subsequent Civil War.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Gerardo Herrero and based on the novel by Lorenzo Silva, “Carte Blanche” follows an elite unit of the Spanish Legion in 1921 as they set out on an unauthorized mission of revenge. Seeking to eliminate Berber forces in the barren mountains of northern Morocco, seven soldiers obediently follow their fanatical sergeant (Víctor Clavijo) into barbarous depths of depravity.
At the center of the story is Juan Faura, played by an impressive Iván Pellicer, a disillusioned and heartbroken young man apparently eager to die in combat. The character epitomizes what Herrero says were many of the young volunteers who joined the Legion.
Spanish Legionnaires ready for battle in ‘Carte Blanche.’
Manolo Pavón/Latido Films
“The majority of people who joined the Legion were running away from something – perhaps they had committed a crime or had some secret they wanted to hide – and the Legion offered them a kind of impunity that simply doesn’t exist today. But there was another segment of people there, and this applies to Iván Pellicer’s character, Faura. He is there because, deep down, he wants to die. Why does he want to die? Because of heartbreak, romantic disillusionment.”
Appearing in key scenes that provide the greater context of the war’s eventual consequences for Spain are José Millán-Astray (Mon Ceballos) and Francisco Franco (Manuel Pico), close allies and the brutal commanders who established the Spanish Legion in 1920 and who granted their Legionnaires a free hand, or carte blanche, to deal brutally with local inhabitants and resistant fighters alike.
Bolstered by his military campaign in Morocco, Franco went on to lead Nationalist forces to victory in the Spanish Civil War, followed by a near 40-year rule as dictator.
“The Rif War – that remains a story untold,” Herrero tells Variety. “Visually speaking, the only existing cinematic depiction is a Francoist-era, black-and-white film made ages ago.
“Whether you call it the Rif War, the African War or the Moroccan War – it goes by many names – it strikes me as the most significant historical event in the history of Spain after the Civil War.”
“In fact, the Civil War contains an element that stems directly from the war in Morocco,” Herrero stresses.
“The war initially marked a massive defeat for the Spanish army,” he explains. Nevertheless, the war allowed Franco and the Legion “to gain a level of prominence they wouldn’t have achieved had the Rif War never taken place.”
“Had Franco not served as the head of the Legion, he might not have possessed the capacity to place himself at the forefront of the rebellion — for that is precisely what Franco did: launch a rebellion against the democratically elected government of the Republic. He managed to invade Spain using the Spanish army stationed in Africa, bolstered by the Moorish troops he was able to mobilize to fight in the Civil War. Had the Legion not existed, perhaps none of this would have happened, and perhaps the Civil War would not have ended the way it did.”
In making “Carte Blanche,” Herrero re-teamed with Silva, a friend and colleague with whom he worked on two previous films. Herrero originally agreed to produce the film adaptation of Silva’s award-winning 2004 novel with another director already attached. The plans, however, were complicated by the project’s ambitious scope.
“The director wanted to shoot it with a much larger budget than what we could realistically secure in Spain for a film like this. So, at a certain point, the project stalled completely; it ground to a halt because we needed to raise a level of funding that simply isn’t available in Spain for a standard Spanish feature film.”
‘When it became clear that the project wasn’t going to happen otherwise, the other producer said to me: ‘Gerardo, the only director I know who is capable of pulling off this film with the budget we have available is you.’ I replied, ‘Thanks for the compliment, but… I don’t know. Let me think about it.’ And well, some time passed, and since I realized that the film would simply fall by the wayside and never get made if I didn’t step in, I decided to accept the challenge.”
As originally written, the film was economically unfeasible, Herrero points out. “It called for a depiction of the Battle of Badajoz — something that would have been virtually impossible to stage. To pull that off, that single sequence alone would have required a budget of several million euros.”
Herrero was able to adapt the script to fit an ideal location he discovered that would serve as the setting for the key opening and closing scenes — an abandoned mine in Granada that was near Almería.
“I was keen to shoot the entire film in the Almería desert — a region I know intimately, having filmed several movies there many years ago — and I realized that I could easily shoot the rest of the film’s sequences there as well.”
“If you structure a film in a way that keeps everything geographically close together, it is much more manageable from a budgetary standpoint than having to shoot in a multitude of different locations,” he notes.
In the end, he was able to make the film for an impressive €4 million ($4.65 million), including advertising.
“It was a very complex undertaking to secure everything, specifically the combat vehicles needed for the opening and closing sequences, as well as the Legionnaires. Moreover, the army provided absolutely no cooperation whatsoever; I assume this is because the whole subject of the Civil War still touches too many raw nerves.”
The production was able to source vintage combat vehicles from private collectors.
Herrero also sought to use practical effects throughout the film, including gunfire and explosions, often enhanced with visual effects.
Shot over six and a half weeks in August and September of last year, most of it in the Almería desert, the film also proved quite a test for cast and crew alike, with temperatures ranging from 35 to 38 degrees Celsius (95-100 degrees Fahrenheit).
“I actually chose to shoot it in the summer so that the actors would truly experience the intense heat found in Africa. With all that heat, the actors were sweating for real.”
Indeed, with all the marching, running and hiking they had to do, the actors wore sturdy military boots – something that may irk some sticklers for historic accuracy, Herrero notes.
“There might be some critics who claim that the footwear the soldiers wore in reality was inferior to what they have in the movie. But that specific footwear was chosen deliberately because I couldn’t risk an actor twisting an ankle and being unable to continue filming.
“If I had put them in alpargatas [also known as espadrilles], which is what many of them actually wore back then, the chances of an actor getting injured and being unable to continue shooting would be extremely high. When you have to repeat a scene seven times — where you have to throw yourself to the ground and drag yourself along — you simply cannot risk someone breaking an ankle.”
“Carte Blanche” is produced by Herrero’s Madrid-based Tornasol Media and sold internationally by Latido Films, which is presenting it at Cannes’ Marché du Film.
