Spanish History X In cinematic Australia, which at the beginning of the third millennium became a field for multicultural experiments, there was a place for southern European passions. Where else can you see an American debutant, armed with a healthy audacity, following Almodóvar’s footsteps in an attempt to make a film with the saying title “Spanish” outside Spain itself. However, only this case was not limited, and the motley cast only confirmed the firm intentions of Steve Jacobs to make the movie as contrasting as possible. Of his two works, most viewers are more familiar with the second called “Dishonour”, which became the adaptation of the novel of the same name, so calling Jacobs a lover of complex and deep topics is unlikely to be a mistake.
Spanish stories are rarely truly happy, but in the case of Lola and her family, there is hardly enough happiness to maintain peace of mind. And where does a middle-aged Spaniard and her teenage daughter find him after their father-husband leaves the family home and goes to live with Australian mistress Wendy? Ricardo, as the last scoundrel, left no money, and the survival of the abandoned family, he obviously cares little. While Lola showers her ex with curses and threats, hiding her own fear and powerlessness for the future behind her anger, her fervently unloved daughter Lucia tries to breathe the lightness of being into the alien world of 1960s Australian society. Only you have to do it alone - Lucia has no friends, and she does not expect a good word from her mother.
Presented as a comedy drama, The Spanish, however, seems an awkward attempt to combine black comedy with a family psychodrama fringed with a rather vague surreal aesthetic. The dramatic collisions of this film live side by side with a hyperbolized farce, sometimes reaching the point of absurdity. With the simplicity of the Western “intellectual” Stephen Jacobs does not shy away from lowering his bizarre plot to pure physiology, whether it is giving Lola an unpleasant ailment called constipation with all the ensuing (literally and figuratively) consequences or showing the fifth point of a patient diagnosed with “skin irritation in a specified place.” The everyday side of “Spanish” to an unprepared viewer will seem very strange, but the director can be forgiven for the ability not to lose the given momentum and atmosphere of the film.
Acting as a free artist and the sole arbiter of human destinies, Stephen Jacobs constantly risks being smeared with expensive Almodovar colors, now and then blurring the surface layers of great passions and frivolity and threatening to strike either in moralism, then in naturalism, then in surrealism, maneuvering between them and saving them from each other. Lola, on the appearance of her daughter, nature seems to have won back, turns out to be as two-dimensional and spiritually undeveloped as almost all the heroes of “Spanish”. This woman will never go beyond rude stereotypes and until the end will be adamant, fulfilling the role of the main irritant in the film and most of all breaking out on Lucia, according to the director’s plan, who became the main victim of the circumstances. But it is in Lucia, who did not inherit from her mother either sparkling brightness of temperament or external colors, that something important and valuable is felt, akin to a sincere love of the world. Being part of a separate enclave on foreign territory, Lucia does not fence herself off from others and does not feel much anger. It is also worth saying that once she still raised her hand on the closest person, which can be regarded as the apogee of general instability.
Jacobs's film really lives up to its title. There is a strong feminine energy and a rush of passions, often blind and reckless, and sincerity can be achieved only by extreme measures. There is not much cruelty and not so much evil that the film can be blown to dust. Kindness is even less, and Jacobs’ humor is very specific. Looking at all this, you don't know whether to cry or laugh, so you don't have to swear. Probably, “Spanish” was the original attempt of the director to present a multicultural society in an unfamiliar country to his extremely subjective taste. He managed to catch some aspects of the Mediterranean stereotype of relations, but one wants to watch the fates of his heroes from a distance, abstracting from reality and even from the established canons of Spanish cinema, otherwise there is a risk of quickly getting tired of the bright, but far from perfect and hopelessly confusing model of relations to the world and everyone living.