Jaime Rosales elevates toxic masculinity to the category of pleonasm

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A personal opinion, both of us, prior appointment, human person... All these expressions have in common that we use them more than necessary in the strict sense.

We use them a lot and when we use them we really do nothing more than use them twice.

They are repetitions, pleonasms.

And this last sentence is valid as a pleonasm itself.

the latest work by

recently presented in San Sebastián, proposes a new pleonasm:

We have all heard of it, of toxic masculinity, which is the elaborate and vaguely technical way of calling the usual machismo.

The term designates a particularly negative, unhealthy and stale way of humiliating the one next door (generally the one next door) and of managing oneself in social networks and for life (if any outside the RRSS);

but, at the same time, and by default, the expression also speaks of a positive and correct way of being masculine.

It would be, to hurry, a more feminine way of being masculine.

And that would end the toxicity.

Toxic masculinity would exist as the clumsy and degrading way of dry masculinity without additives or preservatives.

Well, forget it.

Jaime Rosales proposes in his new work something as elemental in its own way as masculinity itself is toxic, in any of its forms: the hard and the soft, the one with or without a driver's license, the shaven right-winger and the hairy one left, Falangist and collectivist... Like what Ken Loach reminds us whenever he can: there is no good way to accumulate capital without doing damage, the problem is capitalism.

The same with hormones.

And, the truth is, if only because of the clarity of the provocation and the enormous interpretation of

, one would be tempted to agree with her and applaud the opportunity of pleonasm.

be done.

'Wild Sunflowers

' tells the life of a woman in three acts.

For each one of them, a type of man, a class (also social) of male, a way of being in the world.

If you will, the approach is of a clear that overwhelms.

Even, if necessary, naive.

Castillo's character is shaken, first, by a brainless person close to the caricature played by

, completely out of his mind;

then by a soldier so faithful to the rules and orders as a victim of his bewilderment (he does not know or want to learn to take a single responsibility) played by

and, in the end, by a bourgeois so willfully clingy, so to speak, that turns each initiative into a new definition of laziness.

This is

.

In the ideology of the film and the director is to simplify the grammar to the most elemental clarity.

Everything is narrated without that fold between ironic, lyrical and so disconsolately bitter that has presided over a good part of the director's work of superb exercises in bitterness such as

or

.

And up to a certain point, that transparency works as much for as, sometimes, against.

Consciously, Rosales does not renounce the thick line, the crude underlining and --this is what is unjustifiable-- the lacerating simplifications.

He has a lot of tourism guilty of poverty and rootlessness (and, therefore, of the refusal to understand) that almost childish portrait of the first act.

it is more the fault of the script and the exaggerated and consciously flat direction than of the actor himself.

It is so.

Later, the film begins to gain precision, brilliance and, in its own way, rawness.

And without a doubt, a good part of the merit is, as has already been said, the impeccable work near the miracle of Anna Castillo.

The last two chapters come to the appointment with the viewer with their homework done and the profiles alive.

And that is where doubts live.

And the grace, indeed, of the obviousness of pleonasm.

Let's repeat: the problem is not the toxicity of masculinity but the extremely high cholesterol content, the lousy one, of the male hormone itself.

Without blowing up the ending, someone could read a certain classism in the portrait of the last of the characters.

That the precisions in the narration grow as you go up the social elevator (the one that never works) can be something like a self-denial.

Be that as it may, and despite its supposedly conscious imperfections, the result is exactly (or very close to) what it wants to be: a provocation launched in the face of the audience so that they fight with it, against it and from it.

All a previous appointment for with the things of the personal opinions of the human persons.

Pure pleonasm.

Carolina Yuste, Jaime Rosales Lluis Marques, Oriol Pla, Quim Avila, Manolo Solo and Anna Castillo at the presentation of 'Wild Sunflowers'.ANDER GILLENEAAFP

THE RULES, THAT INVENTION

For the rest, the official section gave away two more films designed for good people, for fans of following the rules, even if they hurt.

The first of them was signed by

the director who in 2017 surprised us right here in San Sebastián with 'A species of family'.

That was an enigmatic, erratic and hard film, pure risk, which did not rely on anything other than his conviction to subdue the viewer in each of his doubts.

Now he changes the third and in

he offers one of those school dramas of a dedicated teacher, and well, and problematic students so loved, so standardized and so so (editor, there are two so), that El Chavo would say.

The challenge is to offer something new, but while scrupulously respecting, once again, the rules.

And that is exactly what Lerman delivers.

No one can accuse you of originality, no one can blame you for having made a mistake.

All

runs in the head and in the stress of a teacher forced to reconcile the disaster of a family that is falling apart (he lives separately and shares a daughter with his ex) with the urgency of saving a student persecuted by the drug traffickers

is an actor who vibrates in his permanently tired face and Alfredo Castro, who acts as the teacher's father and local hero, is simply a monster that walks the screen.

There's no way to argue with a comma to Lerman's management.

Imbued with the long tradition that goes from the most classic titles on everyone's mind to Laurent Cantet's masterful

'

the staging is equal parts warm, emotional and frenetic.

The result is a drama with the spirit of a 'thriller' in which just a few assonant notes appear, just the shadow of that magnetic mystery that we liked so much about

.

Be that as it may, bright and clear in the appropriation of rules that are so because they are shared by all.

Classic cinema, in the broadest sense.

'

', by debutant

is something else.

If the latest generation of American independent cinema has become strong in silence, wide and quiet shots, modesty exhibited misery and the effort of a woman to impose herself on a foreign world, the director exercises her recently acquired teaching with ease and excellent background knowledge.

Let's say that, from a point of view if she wants to be the opposite, Mathias knows the rules (the other rules) perfectly and applies them with pulse and pleasure.

The film tells the story of an encounter.

Haas's with Will.

The first just lost her father.

The second fights for a place and a future far from home.

The two are alone.

They both run.

The two look up at the sky and wonder why.

'

' is essentially a beautiful, timed, exciting and sincere film.

Again, there's no way to get great against her without raising the horns of cynicism.

But, and in the same way, there is no way to find a single brushstroke in the whole painting that does not follow the manual.

Of course, and to close the circle, neither in 'El suplente' nor in '

' are there pleonasms.

Here the only pleonasm bites.

They already know.

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