Mystical take on saintly heroine

Spainish history offers intriguing lesson to filmmakers

By JOHN HOPEWELL

MADRID -- Bereft of tax breaks, shorn of succulent subsidies, Spanish filmmakers are turning to one dazzling competitive advantage: Spain's intoxicating, shadowed past. They're doing so, moreover, with new attitudes and novel ambitions.

Agustin Diaz Yanes is shooting a $28 million adventure story "Alatriste," with Viggo Mortensen; Vicente Aranda ("Carmen") has rolled on the $18 million Gilliam-esque knight comedy "Tirante el Blanco."

And now, novelist Ray Loriga, who co-penned Pedro Almodovar's "Live Flesh," will helm "Teresa," a near-psychedelic vision of the raptures and writings of a towering figure, Spain proto-feminist mystic saint Teresa of Avila (1515-82). Paz Vega ("Spanglish") is on board to play Teresa. Loriga's also talking to Mortensen to limn a cleric. (Mortensen also appeared in Loriga's 1997 directorial debut, "La pistola de mi hermano.")

"Teresa" teams Andres Vicente Gomez's Lolafilms (65%), the U.K.'s Future Films (25%) and France's Artedis (10%). Its cinematographer is Jose Luis Alcaine ("Bad Education"). Pic will shoot in Spanish.

"Shooting in English, you're competing with American movies. Unless your film's spectacular, English doesn't open international markets, it closes them," Lolafilms CEO Gomez says.

Pairing religious subject matter with the sultry Vega, who toplined Julio Medem's sensual "Sex and Lucia," and an unconventional style could cause controversy. But Saint Teresa's breathless, stream-of-mysticism prose, reads like a William Burroughs novel, Loriga says. One influence on "Teresa," Loriga says, will be David Cronenberg. Above all, "Teresa" breaks new ground for Spain, which tends to mock its would-be heroes rather than celebrating them.

"I lived in New York for five years. I realized I had a treasure -- Spanish mysticism -- and I wasn't using it. Spanish mysticism is one of the closest approaches to a mystery: man's relation with God," Loriga says. "The time has come for Spaniards to look at their heroes, be proud of them and portray them accurately."