The cuckold It is not only a brilliant Golden Shell, it is also a Golden Shell that should make us all happy with the same forcefulness as it shames us. It took 71 editions of the San Sebastián Festival for a Spanish director to top the list. That says a lot about everything. And nothing good. Although we are happy, it is very sad. And so.
If you want, that contradiction, that of nuanced enthusiasm or that of overflowing sadness (whatever you want), presides over the entire film; a luminous adventure through the darkness; a lightning bolt of truth in the midst of the most seedy. The film could be described as an epic of sorority. But as a programmatic description it does not do justice. It is that, yes, but it is also much more. And it is from an unquestionable ethical and aesthetic rigor.
A midwife (enigmatic and profound Janet Novás) flees her town after being involved in an abortion with terrible consequences. We are in 1971 and fleeing is more than an option, it seems like a necessity. Camborda literally sculpts the film in the dark of the night, in the rumble of whispers, in the clarity of the wind itself. And she does it by modulating the rules of a drama that is at the same time road-movie And till western. All that and celebration of solidarity between the humiliated and the offended. As a director among forgotten directors, she knows what she’s talking about.
The film celebrates the female body while revealing and denouncing all the powers and rules that go through it. The images of an abortion crowd the viewer’s retina with the same violent transparency as those of a birth. And, again, it is in this celebratory paradox between what dies and what is born, between liberation and imposition, where The cuckold It becomes great to announce without a doubt the arrival of a new time – and of a perfectly distinguishable voice – to cinema, to Spanish cinema and to everyone’s cinema.
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