The fortieth edition of The Valencia Festival con Dinner, latest work by Madrid director Manuel Gómez Pereira. Film that had part of the financing from the Generalitat Valenciana, which perhaps justified his presence at the opening of the inauguration gala. Strange decision by the organization, besides, about a film that had been released in commercial theaters just a week before.
The latest production by the director of Why do they call it love when they mean sex??, shortly after the end of the Civil War. In this context, Medina, an army lieutenant, He rushes into the Palace Hotel in Madrid with a very specific order: organize a gala dinner for Franco and the staff of his generals that same night. For it, You will have the necessary help from Genaro, the hotel manager. Hay, however, two problems. A: the hotel has been converted into a field hospital, with which they will have to transfer doctors, equipment and patients to another part of the building. and two: most of the best chefs in Madrid with the necessary qualities to prepare dinner in such hurried conditions, They are from the defeated side and are in prison. After due maneuvers, The prisoners are released to carry out such an unexpected task.. However, which at first seems like an inconvenience, even a betrayal of his principles, can be turned into an opportunity.
Among the best things about Gómez Pereira's film is an art direction that seamlessly transports us to the era he wants to portray and, above all, a selection of actors capable of lifting and maintaining the rhythm of a narrative that, as we will see, appears somewhat out of sync. The relationship between the two main characters stands out in this cast., the timid Medina, interpreted with solvency (and a very outstanding comic sense) by Mario Casas, and the patient Genaro, by actor Alberto San Juan. In an ensemble film, with so many comings and goings of each other on the screen (there are more than twenty characters), I think they are the two roles that manage to build their own personality in an outstanding way., with nuances, and establish a chemistry, an internal tension perhaps more suggestive and attractive to the viewer, a hook, that the rest of the plot.
I don't know the play by José Luis Alonso de Santos on which this film is based. The script by Gómez Pereira himself together with Joaquín Oristrell and Yolanda García Serrano, regular collaborators, For its part, it becomes a piece that is too predictable for a Spanish viewer.. Dinner offers everything you would expect from a product like this. a script (and execution on screen) that plays with a series of stereotypes, so deliberately marked, there are few surprises. It's not just that these clichés (the fanatic falangist with gelled hair, pure-hearted anarchists, the flute-voiced Franco), they turn out, at this point in history, too rough, is that the very approach of these stereotypes makes it too easy to anticipate where the solution to the argument will develop.. This lack of expectations falls on the viewer's attention, who will be entertained with endless subplots that encourage the development of the film. An “you know how this is going to end” that appears from the first frames.
It does not do much to alleviate this lack of expectations or perhaps it is another reason for its failed dramatic approach., the fact that in Pereira's film the discourse prevails, the detail with a political message, to the plot itself, which undoubtedly harms your interest. As stated by the director himself and some of the leading actors and actresses at the film's press conference, Dinner nests within it the ambition to show the contemporary viewer (especially the young), a summary of what that was like. The problem is that the film does not seem to provide a different point of view that has not been discussed on more than one occasion., and the hyperbolic treatment of the characters makes them shipwreck in a poorly elaborate caricature, too flat, even for what this is supposed to be: a light-hearted comedy.
To break this pretension of “entertaining while instructing”, The introduction of certain dramatic solutions that frankly violently break the codes of the genre helps.. In one of the first sequences of the film, the group of prisoners recently rescued from the firing squad (is that scene funny?) They appear before Genaro and Medina to be informed of their mission. As is logical, the prisoners are bewildered: how are they doing, staunch enemies of the regime that is now beginning, to serve the one who has signed his death warrant? one of them, steps forward and declares his refusal to participate in such a farce, even insulting the generalissimo. It is at that moment, when Alonso makes an appearance, the head of the Falange in charge of ensuring that everything goes according to plan. At the request of this, The prisoner repeats his contempt for the Caudillo, and Alonso, without thinking twice, he blows his head off with a shot. The scene is disruptive, It breaks the tone of the narrative and one cannot help but wonder what could be so funny about everything that follows.. Well, there are several scenes of these.
As the director commented at the press conference, These moments are due to the script's intention to show the two sides of a dark reality., full of drama. But one wonders if perhaps the director did not want to cover too many shots at once or did not know how to measure the impact of certain solutions., so that the result is too altered. To represent evil in a comedy it is not necessary to resort to brutality and if it is presented (case of damn bastards the Tarantino film referenced in the presentation), It must be from radically bizarre approaches, something that doesn't happen in a standard comedy like this. It would have been more useful for Pereira to review To be or not to be Ernst Lubitsch's film, to see how evil can be represented without breaking the codes of the genre. Or your own The great dictator Chaplin, which was referred to in the presentation, but whose tone is certainly far away.
This slavery towards the script, is perceived in a realization that feels stiff, more concerned with fulfilling the entire task imposed by each page than with providing comic rhythm to the development of the scenes, resulting in a film that, even without getting too heavy, walks with feet of clay towards its end. A film with a very conservative approach, most indebted to Spanish cinema of the 80 y 90 that of those post-modern proposals that were referred to in the press conference. A movie that, in the opinion of this chronicler, She is born burdened by her age despite her apparent youth. GERARDO LEON
