Muito quente, Senor Garcia

Continuing on with the Latin beat of my recent musings....

Senor Gael Garcia Bernal ups the heat in Mexico, or whatever country he's in at the moment.

Sure I loved him in Amores Perros, Motorcycle Diaries, and Y tu mama tambien, and in El Crimen del Padre Amaro, but I also like him because he's lyrical. I can't think of another word to describe him, but he might come up with a better one. '

London has a very special colour,' he rhapsodises in his furry, fluent, Spanish-accented English, 'looking at it objectively. But through the interpretation I have of it, I hold it very close. Obviously the different mnemonics like smell or atmosphere - the swampiness of being in the Tube in the summer - bring back for me feelings of a place where I spent perhaps most of my post-inflicted adolescence.'

This is how Gael García Bernal talks, even at this pre-caffeinated hour of the morning. Intensely, with a dreamy flourish, with enthusiasm. His speech doesn't follow the rules of grammar, or of interview convention. I had to look up 'mnemonics'; I'm still not sure what a 'post-inflicted adolescence' is; when a word escapes him, he looks for the Latin root or says the Spanish word with an English accent (a 'flood' becomes an 'inundation').

His English is fantastic, but his thoughts sometimes go too fast for his mouth and his words fall over each other.Yet even when he doesn't make sense, you get his meaning. If an English-speaking actor came out with such pronouncements, he would be dismissed as pretentious and confused. (Hello, Keanu.) But with García Bernal, you fall for his soulfulness. And not just because he's hot'n'handsome, but possibly because of his lupine smile, dancing, brown-green eyes and thoroughly winning persona. And certainly because of the work he has done, and the career choices he has made. ---Talk of the Town, The Telegraph, London. April, 2005.