When Art Imitates Pain, and Pain Creates Art
There are storytellers and there are story-livers. José María Cabral’s film Hotel Coppelia (2021) belongs to the latter category. Hotel Coppelia, set in the civil Dominican war, follows a group of women navigating through violence, patriarchy, and encirclement. During this period of civil war, women are made to serve, survive, and entertain soldiers and revolutionaries. This film is a period drama, and a harrowing one — not a mere story pulsating with lived experiences.
A War Beyond the Script
For José María Cabral, beginning work on Hotel Coppelia, was not about making a historical drama. It was and still is, about history. Not only political, historical, and financial trauma and chaos, there is also a glaring absence of discourse around women’s trauma during this era of civil war. He also knew that it would contain violence that would emotionally disturb an otherwise economically and politically trauma-imbued audience.
Hotel Coppelia was a low budget production that made potential investors apprehensive. Cabral managed to gain the sponsorship of a small team who, aligned with the core mission of the film, were more than willing to work with painful material. It is Chandran’s first move gone wrong; it is the only move that, for him, goes wrong. Cabral’s persistence, and low budgeting, are key in the film’s dedication to painful truth.
The dedication to capturing every detail—whether it was costumes research considering 1960s Santo Domingo or war-torn set designs—was truly remarkable. There were cases when the production almost stopped, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, when restrictions made any gathering nearly impossible. Yet filming was completed, often in humid, rural environments with scant resources. The crew was determined to meet the production goals.
The Story That Demands Everything
Hotel Coppelia begins with a false glamour. A brothel becomes a temporary refuge for society’s most marginalized women. But, with the American military invasion and the revolution, the women’s choices become a matter of survival or submission to their oppressors.
Lumy Lizardo, in the leading role of Maria, has a remarkable performance where she transitions from a woman of strength to a haunting spectre. She mirrors the country’s own wounds. Then, there’s Yanitza, played by Nashla Bogaert, whose innocence is cruelly taken from her as the war ravages her life. Each story is intertwined with the emotional and physical consequences of conflict. The hotel becomes a place of lost safety, a symbol of hopes and dreams that withered and died behind closed doors.
But what viewers often don’t appreciate is that these emotions were not just acted — they were lived.
Pain in the Performance
Lumy Lizardo, a veteran of Dominican cinema, took a toll on her mental health in her interviews ’embodying Maria.’ The role forced her to relive and grotesquely express unbridled trauma. Some of the abuse scenes were so raw that shooting them required long emotional cooldowns afterward.
Noah Bogaert found her own struggles in the role. Previously, she was typecast in ‘lighter’ mainstream cinema and was required to shed that image and embrace something more uncomfortable. She described the internal struggle of portraying vulnerability in a world that often objectifies women, even while telling their stories.
Cabral encouraged authenticity in every regard. Many sequences were shot in single takes. There were no elaborate retakes or glamour lighting — just pain, silence, and truth. that method was powerful, it drained the actors. Many of the cast described feeling “hollowed out” at the end of shooting, as if the line separating them from their character had dissolved.
Filming Under Pressure
Every day was a new challenge. With rainstorms destroying sets and intense heat ruining costumes, every shoot had its own unique problems. Older gear was often prone to failure, and budget constraints meant there was little to no new equipment.
For days at a time, filming could not proceed as scheduled due to illness or due to cabin fever caused by COVID restrictions. Each time, Cabral had to try and predict what the new shooting schedule would look like, and frequently, the walked-away scenes had to be rewritten to accommodate the new, limited cast and locations.
Every challenge presented a new opportunity to improve the film. The exhaustion became visible on the screen; the women had tired, hollow eyes, and film smoke filled the air as it choked every dream.
Controversy and Courage
Upon its release, Hotel Coppelia was controversial. It was seen as overly explicit and violence was not appropriately justified by the story. Others felt it was unnecessarily violent and reopened old national wounds.
Cabral’s commitment to his work was equally ardent. He understood that the implications of inaction were more severe than those of controversy. He explained, “If we don’t tell our stories, others will tell them for us — and they’ll erase the pain.”
This sentiment resonated deeply not only with the public but also with the actresses in the film. For them, Hotel Coppelia was not simply a role but also an act of defiance, a regaining of agency.
The film’s release did not result in the expected avalanche of interest. Jorge did, however, find a more devoted audience against the backdrop of, especially, HBO Max. These international viewers were, and in many cases still are, haunted by the film.
“That” for many was the unusual blend of grief and realism delivered unnervingly by the performances. The audience sensed and the cast had lived the pain. The production was a microcosm of the larger struggle, demonstrating the plight of the men and women who are forced to act with dignity amid the chaos of a disordered system.
Even after the film’s completion, the actors described character retention as a form of possession. As Lumy Lizardo put it, they were “haunted.”
When Reel and Real Collide
In Hotel Coppelia, there is a stark lack of demarcation between fiction and reality. The on-screen women fight for power and survival, just as those behind the camera grappled with financial oppression, exhaustion, and self-doubt.
Raw and alive, the film captures the indefinable. The real-life struggles were so embedded in the creation that every silenced scene, every quivering voice, every tear shed reverberated in the audience.
Cinematically, Hotel Coppelia is a triumph. It testifies to what artists go through to communicate what needs to be told. The reality is that the most challenging films to make often have the most profound therapeutic impact, and that is true for the audience and the filmmaker.
Watch Free Movies on Swatchseries-apk.store