Controversial film about teenage sex opens

24 February 2006

MADRID — Teenage Spanish actress Maria Valverde, who stars in the film version of a best-selling and scandalous memoir by a teenage Italian girl, has spoken about her controversial role.

The 18-year-old said the film’s sex scenes gave her pause for thought, but that in the end she decided “to laugh and enjoy it”.

‘Melissa P’ is a Spanish-Italian co-production directed by Luca Guadagnino based on “I cento colpi di spazzola” (100 Strokes of the brush before bed) by Melissa Panarello, an Italian teenager, who three years ago burst on her nation’s literary scene with a best-selling book about her sexual experiences.

Valverde, who despite her young age is already an acclaimed professional, sees her character in ‘Melissa P’ as a girl “who gets a painful pleasure from feeling herself to be an object of men”.

“She is a lost soul who cries for help and takes refuge in sex to escape solitude,” Valverde told EFE.

She also said she doesn’t care about being labelled a ‘Lolita’, as the media christened her two years when she made her screen debut in ‘La flaqueza del bolchevique’ (The Weakness of the Bolshevik).

The performance won her the Goya, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscar, for Best New Actress.

Valverde knows that because of her career she has had an existence different from that of her peers, which she says sometimes gives her the sensation of “having skipped a stage of my life”.

“I could have said I wasn’t ready. But I seized the moment and took a risk,” she said.

‘Melissa P’, which also features Geraldine Chaplin, opens on Friday in Spain.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news