'We treat women too well': the post-Spanish civil war can also be a laughing matter (black)

An anomaly in Spanish cinema is always welcome.

Despite the film's downfalls, which it has.

From its title, a response to current times, although its explanation is, naturally, ironic,

We Treat Women Too Well

is a rare avis, a beautiful bewilderment, a celebration of the complete opposite of what many would want for our cinema.

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Carmen Machi: “That they grabbed you in the subway seemed normal to us”

First, because of its origin: a novel by the Frenchman Raymond Queneau published under a female pseudonym (Sally Mara) in 1947, but set in 1916 in Ireland, in the run-up to the War of Independence after the Easter Rising, which had already been adapted to the cinema in a forgotten film,

On est toujours trop bon avec les femmes

(1971), by Michel Boisrond.

Second, by the transfer of the action from the fight of the Irish Republican Army against the British forces to the immediate post-Spanish war, in 1944, with the failed attempt to reconquer the Aran Valley by the maquis.

Third, for treating these actions in a joking tone, with crazy black humor with the

pulp

spirit of the time, loaded with dirty sex and desperate violence.

And fourth, because the person in charge of directing the event has been precisely a woman, and a debutant behind the camera, Clara Bilbao, a prestigious film veteran with three Goya awards to her credit, but coming from an artistic department in which she is not at all common. make the leap to direction: costume design (Gerardo Vera and perhaps little else).

In their flight to France after the fiasco of the attack, a small group of anti-Franco guerrillas is trapped among the mountain towns, without really knowing where they are or how far from the border, and takes refuge in a post office where , among other people, a woman who was trying on her wedding dress is left hostage.

A brave fascist willing to do anything for her country's ideal and for the celebration of her marital holiday.

In her filth, her anti-heroism and her black laughter, especially in the first half of the story, the film is linked to

La vaquilla

(1985), by Luis García Berlanga.

As in that one, and in a good part of the Valencian master's films, We Treat

Women Too Well

inhabit its usual echoes of a collective failure.

And in the conversations between the republicans, delivered by their wonderful interpreters with a jocular comic tempo, there is much of the misadventures of the group of Berlanguian soldiers led by Alfredo Landa and José Sacristán.

The maquis of 'We treat women too well'.

Antonio de la Torre, Isak Férriz, Julián Villagrán, Óscar Ladoire, Ayax Pedrosa and the Russian Oleg Krikunoff display their grace while the usual torrent that is Carmen Machi eats them with potatoes in the fiction, adapted from the novel by Miguel Barros, with some improbable praying mantis airs.

As is natural coming from where Bilbao comes from, the art of the film (costumes and artistic direction) is very careful and, except for some loose details (that digital fire!), the action is resolved without fanfare but with sufficiency.

However, the main setback is that the story clearly goes from more to less.

As soldiers from the group disappear, the collective laughter is lost and, intimately with bitter nuances, the film is somewhat diluted despite some Tarantinian nuances (also in Mastretta's music) and a nice anachronism with the song of Los Enemies

From the pallet.

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Read all the movie reviews here

Few works have dared to show the absurdity of our civil war through unprejudiced laughter

(La vaquilla; Position advanced,

by Pedro Lazaga; parts of

¡Ay, Carmela!,

by Carlos Saura;

Malnazidos,

by Javier Ruiz Caldera, who shared the pulp

spirit

,

although this was more contemporary), and in that sense Bilbao's debut has all our respect.

And, in case there are pejigueras who, as happened with

La vaquilla,

accuse it of being equidistant, there is one sentence to frame: "We are not better for killing these or those, but they are worse for putting us in this situation."

We treat women too well

Address:

Clara Bilbao.

Performers:

Carmen Machi, Antonio de la Torre, Isak Férriz, Luis Tosar. 

Comedy genre

.

Spain, 2024.

Duration:

93 minutes.

Premiere: March 15.

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