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| Corina Photo: Tallinn Black Nights |
Mexican director Urzula Barba Hopfner's feature début, Corina, follows the story of the 20-year-old titular character, played by Naian González Norvind, who lives in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico. But as the narrator tells us, her whole universe is limited to the Americana neighbourhood – four streets with everything she might need: her house, a friend’s grocery store and the offices of the book publisher she works at. Her finite world is opened up by her book collection, which transports her to other places and realities.
Norvind has previously starred in Michel Franco's 2020 thriller New Order (Nuevo Orden), set in a dystopian future when an upper-class wedding is disrupted by a violent coup d'état, igniting class tensions. She has also appeared as Alice Tetch in Gotham (2014-2019), and had a recurring role in Simon Kinberg and David Weil's science-fiction series, Invasion (2021-present).
In conversation with Eye For Film, Norvind discussed the appeal of Corina's muteness and why art is a worthy endeavour. She also reflected on the maddening experience of acting, the audience's heart-felt response to her quirky character, and storytelling as a transformative experience.
Paul Risker: Why acting as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?
Naian González Norvind: I have to admit that I come from an acting family, and I tried to get away, but in the end, it just pulled me in. There are a few of us involved in acting, and I feel like we've had such different careers. So, it was a mixture of growing up with it and then also having Carolyn, my manager, who had a feeling from the get-go that slowly, but surely it would all start coming together, which was very encouraging.
I ended up studying at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), which was a defining moment, and one of the happiest times of my life. It was defining in the sense that I doubled down on my commitment to the craft. It has been ten years since I studied there, and it has kept feeding me since.
PR: Any form of creative expression is difficult, so what continues to motivate you to act, and has it changed with time?
NGN: It definitely changes throughout time — life changes and priorities change. Then, you can either get a little sick of it, or you can understand in more depth why you do what you do.
The arts are a worthy way of spending one's brief time on earth. It sets a mirror in front of the human condition, and it's a way in which we try to understand ourselves, not only as artists, but people who go see a play, who watch a film, who read a book. It's all about trying to understand ourselves better, and because that's an ongoing, ever-renewing process, the arts just go hand-in-hand with it, right? So, your artistic or creative endeavour keeps growing with you — it's alive.
I've definitely had moments of discouragement and moments of doubt. But when it works, when you do end up working on or celebrating the work that you did, it makes all the effort and all the struggle worth it.
Sometimes people are only privy to the glamorous part of our profession, and they don't realise how much rejection and hard work is behind it. The more effortless it seems, then the more effort is behind it, like with ballet or dancing. You see the performance, and you think, 'Oh, they're just floating in the air' but their feet are bleeding.
PR: I remember in the study materials for a creative writing course, a quote about how people like the idea of being a writer, they just don't like the day-to-day reality.
NGN: Absolutely, and generally those people don't have the perseverance to make it because being an artist requires self-discipline. You're your own boss, and if you don't have that personality built into you, if you don't develop it, then it's really hard.
Now, I'm much clearer about why I do this, what type of roles I want to portray, and how I want to feel challenged. But I'm also more aware of the type of people that I want to work with. I try to be more sensitive to that from the get-go, to not make mistakes and end up spending three weeks or three months in hell.
PR: What was it about this project in its entirety that drew your interest?
NGN: Urzula was definitely one of the main reasons. I always joke with her that she makes me feel like the worst person in the world because she's such a good person that it's impossible to compete. I perceived that from the beginning. I just felt safe around her and felt she knew exactly what she wanted. The way she gave me direction during that first callback was very revealing, and I felt stimulated. I felt like there was a part of me that already naturally understood the character, but there was another part of me that was going to be challenged in the right way. And that was exactly the experience that I had when we were shooting.
A lot of people think she wrote the part for me, which is great, but it was a very conventional process. I self-taped from home. My best friend helped me, and we got super creative. I generally shoot my self-tapes very simply with a neutral background, but not this one. For some reason, my best friend was following me around her house with the camera, and we used props, and we got very artistic about it, but it worked. Then I had a first and then a second callback. Urzula took her sweet time finally coming to a decision, and by the time she let me know, I was very excited. I was also drawn to the character because I was going through a personal process at the time that I felt was very propitious for playing Corina. So, it was a mixture of things.
PR: Returning to an earlier point about how art is a way for us to understand human nature, I've often considered that films start off being about the characters and end up being about the audience. Corina is a character that outsiders, marginalised individuals and introverts, will likely form a deep connection with.
NGN: The audience feels so possessive about the character. I've had people come up to me and call her Cora instead of Corina — they're nicknaming her. When we were in the official selection in Guadalajara last year, I remember after the first screening, we had a little festival party. Coming back to the hotel, I got out of the Uber and as I'm walking into the hotel, there's a group of seven people there who started chanting, "Corina, Corina…" It's crazy, because people take the story into their hearts, and I couldn't be happier about it.
Corina is not just this good, shy person. I love the fact that she lies about her life to her mother, and that she makes up her reality because that adds so much more complexity to the character.
When the film starts, it definitely feels like the clothes Corina has been wearing, metaphorically, don't fit her anymore. I feel like she has a sense that something is going to change soon. But her issue goes beyond that because a lot of people talk about agoraphobia and the difficulty in transcending certain fears, but an added issue with Corina is the loyalty she feels towards her mother, who has an even more violent version of agoraphobia, right? She can't even leave her home, and so that's what makes it particularly hard because we're talking about family dynamics and family loyalty. And that is subconscious most of the time. Her need to get out and grow, leaves her feeling like she's betraying her mum.
PR: We're essentially part of an ecosystem, and if that ecosystem changes, how does it affect those living in it? Do the traits, values and ideas of the ecosystem define any one person?
NGN: Well, that brings me back to the very beginning of the conversation when I spoke about how growing up in my ecosystem, all the attention was geared towards acting. What was celebrated at home was film and this permeates who you are. Then, you realise that there's a little rebellious part of you that goes, "No, wait, wait, wait. What do you mean I'm predetermined by my surroundings? I'm gonna do my thing. What haven't I been doing to be a freer person…" It's the eternal dilemma within each one of us, right? Authenticity versus belonging.
I just read something about how, in earlier times, you were born into a community, and you needed to find your authenticity and your individuality. Now, we're born into individuality because of how the world works, and we need to find our community. So, I'd be interested to either see a film or make a film that turns that around and talks about how individuality is all well and good, but how do we engage in community again — a healthy version of community?
PR: Corina is a character built around silence and physical presence, and she almost reminds me of the hedgehog, which, when scared, curls up in a ball to protect itself. You and Urzula appear to understand that body language is a more prominent form of communication than verbal, which informs your approach to Corina.
NGN: One of the other things that drew me to the character that I forgot to mention was her muteness. I love silent characters, and I remember watching Girl With A Pearl Earring with Scarlett Johansson years ago and being fascinated by her performance. It's one thing to watch silent films from the early 20th century, but it's another to have films with live sound, and then not have the characters engage with that.
It makes some of the work easier, but it adds other challenges. Urzula and I talked a lot about not only the arc of the character, so that she would end up physically in a different place than she started, but also how she related to the spatial.
I didn't use that at the time, I don't think, but I remember there was an exercise in acting school where you walk around the space thinking there's lava beneath your feet. How does that affect your physicality? By imagining it instead of making it come from the body, you project your imagination outwards and let that influence your body. I feel like I must have done something like that for Corina.
I do remember the day we decided she was going to use walls as emotional support. So, if you notice at the beginning of the film when she walks into a place, she's touching the wall, which gives her a sense of safety.
PR: The music is captivating and almost feels as though it's an organic part of Corina's world, in which the character and music are intertwined in a never-ending dance.
NGN: I had no clue that Corina's music was gonna be what it ended up being — I love it. I feel like it echoes Corina's heartbeat and nervousness, and it creates suspense. I know that it was an intense process for Urzula. She was very nitpicky about it, and I'm glad she was.
She was relentless with the musicians, and she's grateful to them because she loves the music. But she told me there was a lot of feedback involved. There was a lot of her micromanaging, but I think why the film works is because she micromanaged every aspect of it, and it ends up being a very personal thing, which is the trademark of any great work.
Funnily enough, I always have a playlist for every character I play, and Corina's playlist was very particular. There's a specific song that I don't think I ever suggested to Urzula. It would have been a very different genre and type of music. But when I think of Corina, I think of that song before I think of the film's actual soundtrack. It's a dreamy 90s song called Moon Rider by Ada.
PR: There's a strong musical dimension to cinema because even before the sound design and music are completed, it has a specific rhythm.
NGN - It was [Alfonso] Cuarón who said, "More than resembling any other art form, film is like music." When you see sheet music with all the different instruments playing simultaneously, that's a film, right? Everything needs to work simultaneously. So, I completely agree, and also, for writing, even poetry, the most gripping poetry has a rhythm. We respond to it because rhythm is inherent in us.
Our heartbeat and our breath have a rhythm. I've been studying craniosacral therapy, which touches on the craniosacral rhythm that comes from the spine, which is actually the first rhythm created when the foetus is in the womb. The first part to be assembled is the spine, which is pulsing with a certain rhythm. It's not the heartbeat because there's no heart yet. So, how many other rhythms do we have inside that we don't even know about?
PR: In film you have to place your performance in the hands of the director and editor, whereas theatre is the actor's medium. Having worked in both film and theatre, how do you compare and contrast your experiences of the two?
NGN: Theatre is a little maddening, but you have to be a little crazy to do any of this. I have had the thought before going out on stage, 'I've been doing it 20 straight days. Why am I doing this again?' It's completely unnatural, but film is also unnatural.
Often, when I'm doing one, I miss the other — the grass is always greener. Whenever I'm doing theatre, I think, 'I wish this scene could just be shot, and we could forget about it.' Or when I do a scene for film or TV, 'Oh, if only we'd had more time to explore that.'
When you can rehearse for film or TV, it's great, and I'm also partial to theatre that has film-like qualities, in the sense that I love understated performances in theatre. I love very quiet and intimate settings. I'm not into the whole big Broadway musical show. It could be fun, and I wouldn't necessarily say no.
I worked with a fantastic director in New York called Richard Nelson. He was a playwright and started directing his own plays. He has such a beautiful way of directing. It's almost as if the audience were a voyeur — as if you shouldn't be there. That's the feeling I've had watching his plays. It's so uncomfortable that you think, 'Why am I here?'
There are certain performances in cinema that have had that same effect on me. I remember Pablo Larraín's Jackie with Natalie Portman. There's one scene where Jackie is wiping the blood off of her face after Kennedy's assassination, and she's looking at herself in the mirror. That's one of the moments that struck me as being too intimate, but I love it when that happens.
PR: A director told me that the person you are before you start a film is different to the person you are when you finish a film. Is the creative process a transformative experience for you personally?
NGN: For sure, because the character teaches you so much about yourself. It is constantly teaching you, so I do think one changes, and it's cumulative. I'm not sure if it's one project, but after three projects, you'll not feel like you did before about a certain thing, or you'll have learned that you need to be humbler. That's one of the fortunes of this profession, and because it's always changing, you can't get bored, and you have to be adaptable.
Corina was selected for the First Feature Competition at the 2024 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, and screened at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
