Luis Martínez Madrid
Madrid
Updated Thursday, March 7, 2024-9:39 p.m.
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At one point in
The Wolf of Wall Street
you hear: «The year I turned 26 I made 49 million dollars.
Which really pissed me off.
"I was three away from getting a million a week."
The phrase is uttered by the protagonist while driving a red Ferrari (or was it white?) and, in its own obscene, crude and unprejudiced way, it quite accurately sums up the tone of the film and, in a hurry, of an entire era.
"Vorágine," says Kike Maíllo while not hesitating to cite Scorsese's film as a reference and inspiration for his
album, Ibiza, Locomía,
which is being presented today in Malaga.
The director is aware that addressing the phenomenon that surrounded
Xavi Font
's group that did so much to move the somewhat stagnant air of the Transition is only possible from the contradictory chaos of its time;
an insatiable time that called for freedom as well as for praying the rosary, which just as it called for modernity did not hesitate to throw itself into the arms of madness.
All of this symbolized Locomía with its fans, its XXL shoulder pads and its sycalyptic choreographies.
«If I have to summarize why I was so interested in this group, it occurs to me in the first place that it was so arbitrary;
"the chance of a success neither sought nor probably deserved,"
the director begins to give an account of his work, what happened back in the 80s and, while we're at it, what happened to us.
Indeed,
Disco, Ibiza, Locomía
wants to be the grotesque chronicle of a grotesque country.
What is seen is not only what Jorge Laplace's 2022 documentary already told us, but, a step further, the film manages to reflect on the condition of possibility of everything narrated.
And it is there, in the magma from which the phenomenon and the eyesore arise (that is), where the Transition enters as a hyper-revolutionized space in which the most rancid Spain learned to coexist with the coolest
and
where a group of people (Locomía was commune before a music group) decided to choose his own family from the recognition (although only behind closed doors) of his free and very drugged homosexuality.
Disco, Ibiza, Locomía
starts at the end.
An act of reconciliation brings together the all-powerful producer
José Luis Gil (whom he brings to life in such a masterful way as Alberto Amman)
with Font (energetic and visceral Jaime Lorente) in the company of all the members of the crazy thing.
The group has exploded into the air just before triumphing in the United States after sweeping Spain and, above all, Latin America.
It's about deciding who Locomía really is: the one who turned him overnight into a money-making machine that the protagonist of
The Wolf of Wall Street
wanted for himself or the genuine creator of fans.
And from here the reconstruction and chaos begins.
«Everything about them was the result of a brutal contrast: a boy band that inflamed women being, as they were, declared gays;
a group that sold records non-stop and where no one knew how to dance or sing;
a fashion revolutionary who invented the most traditional of artifacts: the fan," says Maíllo.
To situate ourselves, Xavi Font, with whom both the director and
the screenwriter Marta Libertad
have shared hours of confession, was born into a wealthy family as the youngest of five siblings.
He soon began creating his own fashion and soon ran to the only place on the planet willing to appreciate his creations: Ibiza.
We are talking about a time of new romantics, pop baroque and ambiguity;
We are talking about a time when at Sunday morning mass he lived with Bibi Andersen in first time on the same television channel.
They say that one day while walking on the beach, Font found some Americans airing themselves with some very Spanish fans and the rest is told on its own.
The film coincides with the star moment in which Xavi and his people (they became 16 in a happy community without filters or rules) performed at Freddie Mercury's 41st birthday at the Ku nightclub in Ibiza with the appearance of José Luis Gil.
The latter, who at just 24 years old was already director of Hispavox and would manage the careers of José Luis Perales, Miguel Bosé and Shakira, saw it clearly.
"Suddenly, some characters dressed in surprising clothing and Renaissance-style shoes began to appear from the shadows, in a lilting and suggestive manner,
as if they were the celebrants of a Sufi dance
," Gil himself writes in his memoirs. .
What followed was turning some nightclub entertainers into a recording event.
None of them had the slightest notion of music and, reluctantly, they learned to coordinate a few movements to make it look like a dance.
And they devastated.
"Looked at from today they may seem like anything to you, but it is clear that they touched the fiber of their time in a rare combination of the crazy ideas of one and the business sense of the other," explains Maíllo to give the exact measure of his fascination. for the maelstrom that never ends.
Until, in 1992, when they were about to jump onto the American market ("They were the first to do it," the director points out), everything exploded.
Font, who had already been replaced, felt strong enough to fire Gil and Gil, who knew perfectly well what a contract was, felt he had the right to create a Locomía with new members.
In short, no one sang or danced or anything there.
And here the film begins and it is here where all the relevant issues are settled: what is success?
Whose ideas are they?
What is the value of friendship?
What is the money for?
What happened to that time when we were crazy, maniacs, locomaniacs and, above all, free?
«This is not the movie
Bohemian Rhapsody.
Here music is not celebrated so much as debauchery.
But it is also a film about the family that is chosen, about the future that is rebuilt, about the life that is recomposed," Maíllo concludes.
Disco, Ibiza, Locomía,
when we were suckers.