The purpose of a documentary is not to tell the truth, but to tell a story. Using recordings of real people to construct a pure lie is not the most decent thing to do, but even in that case, if the story is good and the subtext works, the result will always be better than one of those supposed documentaries that are nothing more than journalistic reports. elongated. Perhaps the documentary genre is the only place where that stupid expression of “my truth” makes any sense. Truth as an absolute concept is something else.
Terenci, the infinite fable It makes it clear from its title. The documentary series by Álvaro Augusto and Marta Lallana tells a story of Terenci Moix, one of several possible. The Catalan writer, who died twenty years ago, was a person and a character. His exhibitionism, less and less fun and more pathetic, is one of the axes that underpin this Filmin production. Through the testimonies of those who were close to him, Terenci, the infinite fabulation paints a far from obvious portrait of someone who, as Anaïs Schaaff, one of the interviewees, says, today would be the octogenarian with the most followed Instagram. The series is full of pearls like that. Some voices are missing (especially one), but in exchange we have Núria Espert or the priceless Colita, an exceptional witness of the last 60 years of Barcelona. We will have to return to the legendary photographer when this documentary demystifying the divine left which Terenci himself seems to ask for at one point in his series.
The affection that Terenci, the infinite fabulation, professes to the enigmatic (despite himself) Enric Majó becomes almost cruelty when he recounts the Catalan actor’s relationship with Moix, who went from protected to plagued. It is not a very different look from the one that Terenci himself applied to his literary characters, often pastiches and stereotypes belonging to that classic but not necessarily good cinema that he adored. The cinema that, as he very melodramatically stated, saved his life, also contaminated it with frivolity and Peter Pan syndrome. The last stretch of Terenci, the infinite fable, takes advantage of its documentary essence (that is, all the characters and scenes that appear occurred in reality) to show things that from a fiction perspective would be unfeasible because they are implausible: the egocentric suicide attempts or the inevitably comical Pablito (his last partner). . Boris Izaguirre tells in the series how Terenci encouraged him to move fluidly between high and low culture. The sublime and the vulgar, impossible fantasies and painful realities, Ducados and Air France, the boy Ramón and the poet Terencio. Alternating between always eating out and not wanting to pay the bill, Terenci became one of the most fascinating characters in Spanish culture, high and low, from the end of the 20th century. Terenci, the infinite fabulation tells one of the many stories that Terenci Moix contains. It’s her truth and it’s wonderful. Others will have others.