Perhaps the fault of thatdryers‘ I didn’t like it as I expected it’s not from the movie, but my own. A Spanish work that mixes social denunciation, the rural environment so typical of recent years, and the fantastic? It sounds extremely good.
The problem is that the film itself feels unbalanced, and focuses more on the pessimism and routine of that town in Granada than on the most interesting and short part: that of that girl who meets a monster made of tobacco leaves.
My neighbor Nicotoro
Each of the few scenes in which the monster appears, a great little technical prodigy with a captivating designit is impossible not to think of ‘My neighbor Totoro’: childhood innocence surrounded by adult drama that allows us to see fantastic creatures that the rest cannot, formed precisely by destiny, way of life and at the same time the prison of all those who they live there, in an industry close to disappearing but still resisting, as if they were the last of their race.
However, its director, the debutante Rocio Mesaends up focusing more on the unity of that Granada family, the protection of nature and adolescents trapped in a world that is not yet theirs (and maybe never will be). The mixture is not subtle nor is it made by embroidering with mastery, rather it seems more like ideas stuck together, without worrying that they are plastered correctly and with little vision of undermining the only thing that manages to make it original.
In recent years, and although its director thinks that there have only been three, We have experienced a boom in rural films of all kinds and colors, from traditional cinema (‘Alcarràs’) to portraits of modernity colliding with tradition (‘20,000 species of bees’) or even stories of machete-wielding psychopaths (‘Cerdita’). A fantasy film in the best Miyazaki style would have been a splendid addition to this little universe that it doesn’t have to lock itself into its own clichés and spend itself as quickly as it seems to be doing.
‘Secaderos’ dries up soon
‘Dryers’ is frustrating. And not because of its points in common with the Spanish independent cinema of recent years, or because it resolves some situations more abruptly than other of its contemporaries, but for purely cinematographic reasons: non-professional actors do not finish lifting the film and in sometimes it is more like an amateur play and, at the end of the day, there is no scene with which you end up in love or stick in your head.
This movie is. Exists. And it’s good that he does it, but in his attempt to hit the table and change everything in the genre, he has ended up in no man’s land. He has fabulous moments (the trip full of psychedelia, all the debt sequences from the anime) but are diluted in a footage that does not really finish telling anything and that sounds repetitive to us. It is not necessarily Mesa’s fault: as I said at the beginning, the culprit that I was not passionate about the film is me and my expectations.
In the end, the fantastic story that the viewer wants to see is reduced to the minimum expression and the magical reality can only be seen on occasions, as if it were the annex to a film that, otherwise, would not be able to contribute anything to the rural Spanish cinema of recent years. And it’s a shame, because the relationship between that trapped teenager who dreams of going beyond the mountains and that girl who sees the town as her summer amusement park it could have been special, sensitive and unique within its only apparent antagonism.
However, the script does not quite hit the mark, as if afraid to fully immerse yourself in fantasy and imbuing himself with a Ghibli spirit whose more solid layer would have been much better for him. ‘Secaderos’ is created with a lot of love inside, but not half the cinematographic nose that it could have: it opens up a more than interesting path for the future of national genre cinema but he is satisfied with simply leaving it like that and not finishing polishing it. Maybe in the next one. Hopefully.
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