Locations
The shooting of ‘007. Die another day’ was altered by the rain and the bad weather. Halle Berry herself recounted later that the water was frozen while shooting the famous scene of her coming out from the sea wearing a bikini. In addition, it was a very windy day and she had to shoot it several times, suffering from hypothermia and a little infection.
Halle Berry was close to lose an eye during the shooting in Cadiz and was also close to choke with a fig during the seduction sequence with Pierce Brosnan, because the actor didn’t stop making jokes and, due to the laugh, it nearly happened.
The only spy with a license to kill was defeated by the tortillitas de camarones (little shrimp tortillas) in Cadiz. The first shooting day of ‘007. Die another day’, the actor Pierce Brosnan went by surprise to have lunch to a famous restaurant, where he tried the typical gastronomy from the coast of Andalucia: cazón en adobo (marinated dogfish), gambas (shrimps), pargo a la sal (salty snapper)… The actor, who kept his reservation of the very same table during the whole shooting time, became a devoted fan of the tortillas de camarones, to the point of making his mother learn how to cook them.
Before the filming of ‘Camarón’, the actor who embodied him, Óscar Jaenada, knew nothing about the “cantaor”. However, he grew his hair and steeped in Camarón knowledge, to the point that he walked, talked and smoked like him. In fact, many people in San Fernando used to call him José, the singer’s first name.
‘Camarón’ was filmed in San Fernando, the singer’s hometown. Many neighbours of the city were present at the filming. Such was their presence that, as Jaime Chávarri said in an interview, “the people of San Fernando have opened their hearts to us.” There have been times when someone has approached me and told me, with great respect, that Camarón would not say some things like that because it sounded very ‘payo’ (non-gypsy), and we changed it.”
In ‘La ley del deseo’, there are several references to the work of the painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967). One of them in one of its most mythical and, at the same time, most dramatic scenes: when Juan (Micky Molina) dies at the hands of Antonio (Antonio Banderas). The lighthouse appearing in the background, to which they went in the middle of the night, is the Trafalgar Lighthouse, in Barbate.
From Huelva to Málaga, going through Cádiz, the beaches of Andalucía are not only an attraction for millions of local and foreign tourists along the year, but also a claim for the film directors and well-known artists that used them as a set for their films, TV shows, documentaries and video clips. Far from the sand and the sun, which delight the visitors who come to the area, the coastline of Andalucía has become an immense set where many audio visual productions have been shot, showing all around the world the beautiful coastline of Andalucía.
“Andalucía should be Europe’s Hollywood. It has everything. And because there are more and more shootings there, its crews are the best. Everybody wants to shoot in Andalusia.”
