With 14 Goya nominations, ‘Maixabel’ starts out as one of the great favorites of the Spanish cinema night. The film by Icíar Bollaín, co-author of the script with Isa Campo, is a beautiful containment exercise with a sensational cast and a mechanical coldness that, perhaps, ends up playing in favor of the work.
Dating in the third grade
Although the success of ‘Patria’ is still hot, it would not be entirely fair to recall that the HBO Spain series adapted a novel by Fernando Aramburu from 2016. Unfortunately, the basque conflict and the various degrees and areas of his pain remain in our memory as fresh as the memory of any vision of the events can be.
To tell this new old story, Bollaín relies on portentous performances by his protagonists and his secondary and great revelation, Urko Olazabala true thief of moments who seizes the film with his repentant terrorist condemned to a personal hell for the rest of his days. Best Supporting Actor?
Tolosa, 2000. Three men flee after murdering socialist Juan María Jáuregui in cold blood. The politician leaves a daughter and wife, Maixabel, who will decide to participate in a forgiveness project among terrorists convicts and victims of the ETA attacks. As expected, the story has filled theaters and the chances of winning the odd prize.
‘Maixabel’ is the story of a theoretically unattainable forgiveness and reconciliation that does not have ten hours to develop the plot, and its ellipses and time jumps, some really abrupt, cool an emotional heat that goes out as soon as the smoke. The true narrative success is found in the screenwriter Bollain, who together with Isa Campo puts her actors on a platter great and scorching dialogues, the true strong point of the film. “We cast it to lots.”
A film of details, of silences, of glances that meet and that do not, of script, but above all it is a film of characters. Of actors. of actresses There is no peace or forgiveness for victims or victimizers, inhabitants of beautiful places to walk with an escort. A place where the eternal vicious circle of guilt and fear hardly leaves room for reason.
The director avoid stumbling into sentimentality easy, although it cannot avoid a raucous car ride accompanied by the sound memories of one of the protagonists, a somewhat hackneyed and outdated resource that also occupies a longer space than desired. But he also knows how to seize the ghostly story by placing the furniture of that cursed cafe in one of the most emotional scenes in the film.
With its pros and cons ‘Maixabel’ is a satisfying experience. The conversations and dates between the protagonists are so good that one feels that they have too quickly deprived them of some more. But the important thing is that his real story, brought to fiction with delicacy and respectis here to remind us that despite the sorrows, underneath all that, there may still be something that makes us human.