Luis Martínez Madrid
Madrid
Updated Saturday, March 9, 2024-13:42
Criticism Second prize: it's not The Planets, it's us, reasons for a masterpiece
Report Inside the chaotic filming of the first film about The Planets: "The idea of making a cursed film was good but there was no need to be so literal"
Malaga Festival Álex Montoya teams up with Paco Roca to turn 'La casa' into the surprise of the Malaga Festival
Malaga Festival The cinema of blood and silence by Celia Rico and Andrea Jaurrieta, two new, mature and different voices
Review Little loves: the mechanics of Rubio notebooks (****)
As befits the tortured biography of Los Planetas,
'Second Prize'
, by
Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez,
received the more than just Biznaga de Oro with the fire siren running amok at the Teatro Cervantes.
It happened in the morning, not at the gala, just when the winners were announced.
Quite a premonition.
As the presenter said,
there are movies that set off alarms and even fires.
For her it was the first prize (pause) and the silver trophies that mark the best direction and editing by Javi Frutos.
The decision of a jury chaired by Claudia Piñeiro is irreproachable, which also highlighted
'La casa',
by Álex Montoya, with the Special Jury Prize and the music award by Fernando Velázquez, and '
Radical
', by Christopher Zalla, as the film Ibero-American of the recently concluded edition.
Thus,
'Second Prize
' begins the first step in what, everything indicates, is going to be a season of its own.
The film is many things at once and all of them, like the hours on the clock, hurt.
On paper it is simply the necessarily convulsive story of the recording of an album that is exactly as convulsive.
We are talking about '
A week in the engine of a bus'
, an LP with the shape and gesture of a portrait of an entire generation.
But, as it progresses,
'Second Prize
' comes and goes in the viewer's eyes like the patterned narrative of a growth myth, like a legend of time, like a survival story and, if necessary, like the only possible fabulation about the very possibility of fabulating.
And growing.
A 'Second Prize' moment.WORLD
'Second Prize'
is a film with the manner of an event that, at times, explodes on the screen in a cry of recognition.
It is an old generational cry and a new discovery.
Everything at once.
And all this without giving up the necessary and shared experience of the common.
Constructed the opposite of
'The Legend of Time
' - Camarón's old film signed only by Lacuesta -, the story does not come to meet the camera as life itself does at the fortuitous moment of filming, but is that life, transmuted into simple truth, which is summoned at the moment of filming.
There is something magical in the way the songs already incorporated into the memory of many now forty-somethings emerge from the surface of the screen as if for the first time.
And it is there, in the constant feeling of mutual recognition, loss and reunion, where the film becomes strong.
Indestructible even.
The jury has done nothing but surrender to the evidence.
And it has done so, in a Malaga edition as disorderly (there have never been so many out-of-competition productions without purpose or order or concert) but also valuable and balanced in its competition.
Of all the Spanish productions, at least four are there to determine a good part of the year:
'La casa'
, by Álex Montoya, which adapts with taste, tact and a sense of depth the graphic novel by Paco Roca;
'The Little Loves'
, by Celia Rico, which won the award for best supporting actress for the enormous Adriana Ozores;
'
Nina
', by Andrea Jaurrieta, which had to settle for the award given by the critics' jury, and the aforementioned Biznaga de Oro. They are all important films,
with their own voice
and that mutually recognize each other in a competition each ever tighter on purpose.
For the rest, the rest of the winners fulfilled the uncomfortable task of balancing between here and there due to their status as Spanish and Ibero-American.
It is only fair that the well-intentioned and orthodox film '
Radical
', by Christopher Zalla and starring star Eugenio Derbez, won the Biznaga there.
Although it is a production presented at Sundance two years ago, in January 2023. And the awards to actress Lola Amores,
for
'The Wild Woman
', by Cuban Alán González, and the one awarded to Luis Zahera as a duet,
also do not deserve
any reproach.
for '
Pájaros
', by Pau Durà, and
Joaquín Furriel
for
'Descansar en paz',
by the Argentine Sebastián Borensztein (a film that also won the supporting actor mention for
Gabriel Goity
).
Thus, an alarm for
'Second Prize'
, the fire of Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez.