Spanish television series have undergone a slight international golden age in recent years. The bank coup series La casa de papel is Netflix's most viewed non-English-language series and also teenage drama The Elite School has reached far beyond the country's borders.
This spring, it was thought that HBO would race Netflix with its first Spanish original series Patria - based on a bestseller about two families living in the Basque country during the terrorist group ETA's active year.
Then it became a global pandemic and Spain became one of the hardest hit countries. Patria was managed in the future and instead produced HBO corona short films in rocket speed. In April, five different directors filmed each film in their respective homes.
A casa (at home) puts its finger on the fact that "recognition" is an overrated story element. There is no lack of recognition in any of the films. Video calls with friends, saucy home clothes, excessive hand washing, increased irritation, hopelessness and balcony applause. But you don't want to see this? It's like someone has set up a camera over one's home office and then forces one to look at it - sometimes with an added element of supernaturalism or other grunts that don't really fly.
One of the films in En casa puts the home crowd in a larger context - in section four, Carlos Marques-Marcet manages to get a little history lesson in isolation, humor and thoughts about love and break-up that feel interesting - something that makes the sadness feel universal and a little elevated . Marques-Marcet is also the only one who has made something imaginatively exciting with archive pictures and extreme zooming in on various everyday objects in the apartment. (See the introduction to section four of the clip above.)
The other four films feel a bit unfinished, like a student project thrown together at the last minute, which may not be so strange since all the films are made in April and are meant to capture something that is happening right now.
But I am still disappointed considering what it could have been. I think of David F Sandberg and Lotta Losten's super-short Youtube horror Lights out, which is recorded entirely in the couple's home and which gave Sandberg a solid Hollywood career. You could tell us something more than what it is like to be in an apartment all day.
A case is found at HBO Nordic.