From the works that are still perfectly groundbreaking and even completely broken by the collective 5QK’s (read Cinco Cucas) back in the late 70s, to the painful daring of Antonio Jiménez Rico in ‘dressed in blue’ already entered the 80s, without forgetting the revolution and flag that was the documentary-testimony ‘Ocaña, intermittent portrait’, of Ventura Pons, the Spanish Transition can boast, and at the same time be ashamed, of a cinema so different in forms, in genre and in bodies as, let’s face it, hidden (hence the shame). All this diverse cinema (diverse in addition to LGTBIQ+), that there was, ran on the other side of the splendors; from the back of the screens and from a time of Movida. The arrival of a new time was celebrated as if our lives depended on it (which we did) and in the uproar and frenzy of the party many things were lost, many images and even many memories. It wasn’t exactly amnesia, but close.
‘I’m madly loving you’by Alejandro Marin stands at that time. And she does it with a proud gesture. The idea of the film is eminently festive. But along the way, in full celebration, he also stops to show the many accumulated wounds. And it is there in the balance between what is shouted and whispered, what is cried and what is sung, the proposal of the almost newcomer Marín (he previously participated in the collective film ‘La hija de alguien’ and appears in the credits of series like ‘lost fagot’) succeeds in creating his own space and endowing his voice with a pleasant and slightly broken timbre. ‘I’m madly loving you’ belongs to that rare genre of cinema between vindication and revelry that it is enjoyed without wanting to, excites without overwhelming and entertains without offending.
Let’s say that the film tells the story of Reme (arrogant, as is the norm, Ana Wagener) and his son (Omar Banana). She is a tailor, because she is a tailor’s widow, and he, an aspirant to appear on the program ‘Gente Joven’ on the only television at that time. Along the way, pay attention to La Dani, Alba Flores or the always in place Jesus Carroza. Everything takes place in the Seville of 1977 with all that this means of uncertainty, brutality and other accidents of that chiaroscuro that gives rise to monsters when what is dying disappears and the new is not yet born, as Gramsci said from prison. The film appropriates a good part of the common and abandoned memories as before it and very recently they have been able to make films like ‘Model 77‘, by Alberto Rodríguez, the ‘The good companies’, by Silvia Munt. The first stopped at the COPEL (Coordinator of Prisoners in Struggle), the mythical group of prisoners now erased from shared memory that would fight for the rights of common prisoners and amnesty, and the second in the battles of feminist groups to favor of abortion The difference with respect to these is the tone.
‘I’m madly loving you’ it’s not drama Or it is not a horse’s claw like the others. Both Rodríguez and Munt dressed as ‘thriller‘ the evidence of injustice and the obvious and hard desire to denounce. All of that is present, but in a different way. What matters now is the need for vindication right next to the yearning for celebration. Memory matters, but not as a territory forbidden only for pain, but also for pride, celebration, impudence and provocation. Marín manages to appeal to the viewer with emotion and coherence with a simple, effective and, why not, eminently populist grammar. The idea is not so much to teach the occult, but also to share with everyone the injustice of forgetting. And do it singing.
The tape shares with ‘Pride‘, of of Matthew Warchus, that effort to unite theoretically opposite worlds. The English film recounted the association prejudicedly ‘against nature‘ between a small group of gay activists, all coloured, and miners from a South Wales town, all smudged grey, during the strike of 1984 and 1985. And what came out was a celebration of the celebration itself, a celebration the pleasure of celebrating together. And without theoreticians. Now, the director is trying something similar and the rainbow activism of mutant acronyms is associated with the evidence of freedom in any of its forms in a time, the Transition, of freedom. Nothing else.