You have to laugh at everything. And everything is everything. The jokes about Daniel Sancho and Luis Rubiales are already taking too long. What does not become humor becomes entrenched. An untouchable taboo ends up becoming sacred. From ETA to #MeToo. That “in ETA he ate the host” from Fe de etarras continues to be one of the best jokes in Spanish cinema. Just like the dialogues of Chivalrysatire full of Rubiales and #MeToo, are some of the best on recent television. Premiered in April of last year on the British Channel 4, this series created by Steve Coogan and Saran Solemani has been on Filmin for a few days.. Its six very short chapters are absolutely brilliant.
Chivalry It perfectly combines Hollywood satire with romantic comedy. The first is evident from the beginning, the second emerges as the series progresses and we can read it as a perverse joke. Chivalry is a criticism of the machismo of the film industry that plays with becoming the audiovisual genre most gutted by the gender perspective. The need for women to occupy positions of power in films and series is a truism that no one in the right mind dares to discuss. Just like almost no one goes into the garden the amount of stupid things that are said about it.
In ChivalrySteve Coogan is Cameron, a film producer forced to hire Bobby (Sarah Solemani), a film director indie feminist, to finish filming a film that has gone into a tailspin. Their most important sex scene should be re-shot (it’s old, it’s dirty, it’s ridiculous) and, if that were not enough, the star (Sienna Miller) is fed up. Luckily (“luckily”) the director of the project dies suddenly and Bobby is able to take over the film. But redirecting a train that is already derailing is difficult. That train is the movie. And Hollywood. And Cameron. And Bobby.
Because she doesn’t either she is neither holy nor wise. Bobby is smart and decent, but he needs to finish the movie to move on and he wants money. His personal life is not exactly idyllic and in his head the theory (so clean, so easy, so clear) collides with the real world.
What is and what should be collide in Chivalry. The series is as smart and as twisted as its characters. That Wanda Sykes, one of the most combative lesbians in the world show business, play an unscrupulous producer, is just one of Solemani and Coogan’s poisoned gifts. Or that Paul Rudd, like in Just Murders in the Buildinglends itself to self-parody. “What I want is to respect women”says in Chivalry the actor who has to film a disturbing sex scene with Lark (Sienna Miller). Her character is a Nazi, she a member of the Resistance. “Nazi movies make a lot of money,” Bobby says later, suspecting that she could be turning into what he hates most: a sellout, a traitor, a daughter of the greatest whore. Sorry: daughter of the great whore. You have to laugh at everything.