'Birds': worthy tragicomedy about the crisis of masculinity

What a pair of birds. And, although the film talks about cranes and flamingos, ducks and geese, we are not referring to these, but to the two types that Pau Durà and co-writer Ana M. Peiró have conceived and described: two men around fifty, recognizable in their pathos, dead of fear and failure, of mediocrity and sorrow, but at the same time faithful to the arduous task of hiding their shrinkage through a now classic manliness, that of sticking one's head into the shell of hardness.

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Pájaros,

third film as a director by Durà, a regular actor until his debut behind the camera with the generational drama

Formentera Lady

(2018), which was followed by the sitcom

Toscana

(2022), is a tragicomedy about the crude job of living the elements without showing weaknesses and hesitation. A job, fundamentally, for a man. Even more so, as a man around fifty. A film that was born in the Cabanyal neighborhood, in Valencia, and that ends in the South of Romania on the banks of the Danube, after passing through Catalonia, Turin, the Slovenian Alps, Hungary and Bucharest. A worthy story of friendship between equals, born by chance and turned into iron after passing through economic compensation, which aims to bring out the most pathetic and, at the same time, the most tender and human side of two important cafres.

Luis Zahera and Javier Gutiérrez, in 'Pájaros'.

At the helm, two imposing actors, owners of an enormous variety of resources between black comedy and drama. Javier Gutiérrez and Luis Zahera, 53 and 57 years old, respectively, show off in beautiful costumes of average sufferers. Gutiérrez, with that ease of his of releasing social, family and human atrocities with the grace of tragedy and melancholy, and with that Katharine Hepburn resource of keeping his eyes glassy for infinite seconds without a tear falling. And Zahera, who in principle is better suited to expansive roles than those that are inward, like this one in

Pájaros,

“a stutterer since he was little” and hurt by a car tragedy that led to sentimentality, who nevertheless builds his weakness from the framework of the technique, and that resounding use of the hands, so particular to the Galician actor, in climatic moments.

Guided by the elegant photography of David Omedes, bright when it should be, dimmer in the coldest passages and places, Durà has composed a film about the consequences of middle age and the challenge of redemption. With tragic and funny moments, although also with some dead time that contributes little to its good character study, and with certain redundancies due to the easy comedy of a thicker line,

Pájaros

progresses thanks to its performers and the reflection of its author about what ends up uniting us Europeans as different as the Spanish and the Romanians: partying, music, corruption, friendship, solidarity and, of course, football.

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Durà's The Flight of the Birds will be shorter or longer depending on what we expect from a film like this, but its dark sympathy and its portrait of how damned life is sometimes and how painful people can be are close. to connect with the best Mediterranean cinema, with those Italian films from the fifties and sixties of open-air characters showing their inner demolition amidst laughter. In fact, Gutiérrez and Zahera could perfectly be Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi in search of themselves.

Birds

Director:

Pau Durà.

Performers:

Javier Gutiérrez, Luis Zahera, Teresa Saponangelo, Edgar Moreno. 

Genre:

tragicomedy. Spain, 2024.

Duration:

100 minutes.

Premiere: April 5.

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