Sent by his mother to live with a father he barely knows, the life of 10 year-old Eric takes a dramatic turn. As Eric struggles with change and adjustment, the unstable but promising father-son relationship is soon tested by their economic instability.
It took Lolli no less than four years to write this script, which represented for him a process of psychological healing. His exploration of the father-son dynamics takes even more importance knowing that Lolli never met his own father. The awkward re-encounter between the protagonists transmits a message of hope, mixed with sadness.
The film's representation of opposed social classes drives it into a line of biting criticism. As Eric is taken in by his father’s rich employer: Maria Isabel, the distance that separates her lifestyle and his own becomes increasingly obvious. Maria Isabel's country houses and pony rides are directly juxtaposed to his father's eviction from his home and his never-ending debts.
This Colombian tale of social and family drama aims at everyone's sensibility; one can identify with his characters no matter where you come from. As he points out: "It is a universal story as well as a Colombian one, even though on a personal level but it would have been impossible for me to do it elsewhere".
This project, however, was not as smooth as it appears on screen. Lolli describes the casting and filming process as very much based on his own intuition, which was hard to satisfy. It took him seven months to find Brayan Santamaria, the young actor who plays Eric. After going through more than 2000 little boys Lillo admits: "The casting people hated me." It was finally in the street that Lillo first met his star actor. Brayan was working with his father when Lolli invited him to join his cast.
As for Carlos Fernando Perez, Eric’s father, finding him was just as painstaking. "I never knew my father” Lillo says, “so for the casting of the father I was very difficult as well. Since this movie is a lot about me, I kept on asking myself: “Is he good enough to be my father?... In the end we found Carlos two weeks before shooting," having invited Brayan Santamaria to the casting sessions to help him choose his father-actor.
After battling to find the perfect actors, locations and music, Franco Lillo's effort paid off. Filming started in the Colombian capital: Bogota in October of 2013. The general response is very encouraging. The public appreciates Lolli's detachment from the usual Columbian stereotypes, such as drugs, prostitution and gratuitous violence. What is more, Gente de Bien was selected for seven different festivals, including Cannes and London's BFI. This positive feedback could only mean we should expect a sequel to Lillo’s cinematic psychoanalysis.
