No matter how much I think about it, I don’t finish understanding Who is ‘On the Margins’ addressed to?: the right-wing public is not going to see it and, if it does, it will be accused of propaganda. The one on the left already believes in what is shown: the result remains as an attempt to evangelize the converts. Juan Diego Botto has good intentions, yes, but making social cinema goes beyond telling a few misfortunes and let the public be outraged: although the film is worthy and tries, in the end it leaves an aftertaste of emotional manipulation little (or nothing) hidden and somewhat unpleasant.
crying in the limo
There are those who said that ‘Parallel Mothers’ was the result of Pedro Almodóvar reading the editorials in El País. In the case of ‘In the margins’ it is the Juan Diego Botto entering a lot in La Marea and reading Twitter to condensing the headlines of a month into a film that talks about solidarity, yes, but also about the evictions, hunger queues, the kellys, immigration, moonlighting and social housing while showing us how a stepfather and a stepson end up getting to know each other.
I’m not going to lie to you: as much as I, personally, agree with the ideas of ‘In the margins’, the script has some really embarrassing scenes that needed a touch-up (Tosar’s boy saying “It’s not my problem” when he can stop an injustice, for example). That is not an impediment for the film to be worthy, partly because, if in your cast you have Penélope Cruz and Luis Tosar, it is very difficult that it is not salvageable. Both could make reading a Mercadona ticket emotional and dramatic. They are that good.
There are very good intentions in this film, but in the end it still feels like a teardrop compilation, a compendium of injustice and pain that does not provide solutions of any kind. What he does is raise the situation, drop that there are people in solidarity and that the union is strength, and that would be it. Do not investigate further, and in the end more depth is missing so that good intentions are not left alone in a very exciting episode of ‘Bart’s People’.
Married lawyer fights for his client
In this sea of unjust situations, a lifeline stands out with the face of Luis Tosar, Rafael, who plays a lawyer who brings the necessary dose of tension to the film. In fact, He would most likely win if he focused on him and on those 24 hours that he lives as a Jack Bauer of solidarity to which, in an intelligent turn of the script, no one hesitates to amend the page. In a character who runs the risk of being the great white savior, it is a touch of grace that give it the necessary nuances to go beyond the simple pamphlet.
The character of Penélope Cruz, Azucena, does not suffer the same fate, is a collection of continuous dramas and misfortunes and that seems prefabricated so that people identify with her and her role as mother courage. Although Penelope manages to make a great character out of some prototypical lines and give her nuances that can hardly be intuited in the script. She doesn’t weigh down the movie and her scenes are exciting, but I wish I had given it a little more complexity.
The rest of the plots of this presumably choral film revolve around these two, and they try to cover all the marginal problems in just over a hundred minutes, from the situation in brothels to the drama of single immigrant women. I would have played more in his favor focus exclusively on one of the proposed dramasbut it’s not annoying either. Just… nondescript.
so good so bad
It is clear that Juan Diego Botto, who has been an actor since he was ten years old, is very aware of evictions and the drama of people with fewer resources, but at the same time it is clear that it is still, pardon the expression, a rich man’s tantrum. ‘In the margins’ spends a lot of time discovering a world that paradoxically lacks reality, and that most viewers already know. Director he does not do it with the hand that someone who had really gone through a problem of this type would in their life.
Botto’s film leaves no margin or peace of mind to its protagonists, who have to live the ravages of society without giving a break: the burden ends up becoming a routine and the end of the film, which tries to give a hopeful look at Spanish social problems, is just a mere formality. It’s hard agree with what a movie tells, but at the same time feel manipulated: right-wing viewers (if anyone is going to see it) are going to leave very angry.
‘In the margins’ is a film that could -and should- have been better, in which top tier actors read a second rate scriptand that instead of moving people with well-constructed characters, it limits itself to listing the social problems that exist in Spain without proposing a solution in this regard. It is social cinema only in its coverage: inside there is an absolute emptiness.