'Mari(dos)': unequal graces in the Spanish comedy about all the new forms of love and sex

From the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, there was a film and television man in Spain who was much smarter than the rest.

His name was Pedro Masó and he had fantastic eyes and ears for knowing at all times what was going on in Spanish society: what people on the street were talking about and, therefore, what they wanted to see in theaters, almost always in products around popular comedy.

First as a screenwriter and then as a director and above all as a producer, Masó was the architect of the colorism of

of reflecting developmentalism in

of taking advantage of the spatial milestone in just a few months with

to get ahead of the divorce law in

or reflecting the affective problems of a new youth in

All of them, better or worse, fabulous public successes.

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A practice, that of putting eyes and ears on the world that surrounds us, that two of the current major film production companies, Atresmedia and Telecinco Cinema, also seem to want to put into practice for some time.

From the most banal, and titles such as

by Nacho G. Velilla, on hair implants in Turkey, to somewhat deeper issues, although always with laughter first, as is the case of

Telecinco production that aims to embrace not one but (almost) all the new (or, if not new, at least naturalized in a certain sense) ways of relating and developing affectively, personally and sexually: double lives with adulteries stretched out over time ;

late discoveries of female homosexuality;

high-risk sexual games in people of conventional appearance;

boys and girls who, from a very young age, feel with more or less power that they are not the gender they were assigned at birth.

All this revolves around two men, and their respective children, who discover that they are married to the same woman, in a coma after an accident.

With a script by Pablo Alén and Breixo Corral, struggled in television and film comedy in estimable or worthy titles such as

and

does not start well because, regardless of the irregularity of the script, which is constant, there is a distribution detail and another interpretation, both focused on the character of Paco León, which do not quite come together.

As was also the case with the recent

by Álex de la Iglesia, with the choice of Alberto San Juan to face the outrageous jester and in great shape that is Ernesto Alterio, co-star of the two films, here León has been chosen, a magnificent artist, but another actor whom what he is best given the role of the clown that confuses everything, that of the august agitator;

that is to say, that of Alterio.

And neither San Juan in De la Iglesia nor León here seem comfortable as white clowns, the role that is the object of the constant jokes of the actor Alterio, who eats up the show again.

The second issue that devalues ​​the character of León is the invention that he is unnecessarily Catalan, which leads the actor to imitate an accent that sometimes works well for him and in certain phrases, syllables or sequences he simply forgets.

Regardless of all this, and regardless of the fact that the complicity between Alterio and León is gaining with the course of the story, there is another name that comes out reinforced from

and that of its director, Lucía Alemany, who offers one detail after another. of how to direct a popular comedy without using a broad brush: in the transitions between sequences, in the use of off-screens to encourage intelligent grace, in the tail jokes that are not emphasized by the mise-en-scène or by heavy opening lines blueprints.

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Just as we wrote last week regarding Alauda Ruiz de Azúa and her commissioned direction for

a Netflix romantic comedy, the still young Alemany has put aside her most personal and auteur cinema (her notable 2019 debut,

to get behind the wheel of a film with commercial ambitions that will lead to a better port.

And why not?

Masó and her popular clairvoyance continues to be a model of cinematographic dignity to follow.

Mari(two)

Address:

Lucía Alemany.

Performers:

Paco León, Ernesto Alterio, Celia Freijeiro, Raúl Cimas. 

Genre:

comedy.

Spain, 2023.

Duration:

95 minutes.

Premiere: March 10.

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