The Mexican actor Gael García Bernal could be the protagonist of the film “The Savage Detectives” (Los Detectives Salvajes in Spanish), based on the book of the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, announced today the newspaper “La Nacion”.

The director, Carlos Sama, said in an interview with the Chilean newspaper that he’s “in talks” with Gael Garcia Bernal to play the protagonist of the film that could premiere in late 2009.

“The Savage Detectives”, published in Chile in 1998, relates the search for Mexican poet Cesárea Tinajero by two young poets: The Chilean Arturo Belano, who would be interpreted by Garcia Bernal, as well as the Mexican Ulises Lima.

Sama, aged of 41, who wrote the screenplay for the movie with Luis Felipe Fabre and Arcadi Palerm-Artís, said the shooting will start this year in northern Mexico in the Sonoran Desert, “which is a very special place”.

He added: “In my edition of the film, I do not propose to bring all parts of the book, which would include France, Israel, Spain, Africa. It would be a craziness of five movies of two hours each.”

He explained that for that reason, the script only include “the first and the last part [of the novel], respecting its structure”, for which he had to obtain the rights to Carmen Balcells agency in 2004.

“The Savage Detectives” is the most award-winning novel of Bolaño, who died in 2003, which won the Romulo Gallegos (1999) and the Herralde (1998), in addition to be ranked by the newspaper New York Times as one of the 10 best novels published in English in 2007.

Source: Informador