It had been 15 years since Arturo Pérez-Reverte had been seen in movie theaters, since Imanol Uribe dared with ‘La carta spherical’. The truth is the writer has had no luck with the adaptations of his novelsand they all end up being a little hodgepodge that show that their true strength was in their original material.
However, even if he was not very lucky, the worst was yet to come: ‘The skin of the drum’ is the worst movie based on a novel by the writera thriller so topical that it becomes strange, an example of how to make only the wrong decisions.
We are in Seville, my weapon
Let’s start with the good: Seville. The film is set in an absolutely charming city enhanced by great photography, although sometimes the lack of budget means that it could be anywhere else. Sadly, a city so well portrayed deserved a better film. worse is the strange, unusual, terrible decision to make the whole world speak English in the film. Not only with Richard Armitage, but among Sevillians.
‘La piel del tambor’ makes the strange decision to take first-rate Spanish performers (Amaia Salamanca, Unax Ugalde, Rodolfo Sancho) and make them speak another language. It’s not that they do it wrong, but they seem uncomfortable with the decision of having to speak in a language that they do not have to master, and leads to absurd situations in the cinema of 2022, such as seeing two Spanish characters played by actors from here in Seville talking to each other in a language that is not theirs. Delirious.
In part, ‘The skin of the drum’ looks like an adaptation of the novel made the same year it was released, 1995and directly for television: the mise-en-scène is absolutely anachronistic, the actors continually seem to exaggerate and the film, which does not trust its viewers, repeat over and over again what has happened so farlike doing small recapitulations in case you fell asleep or were looking at your mobile.
Reverte is already doing well
I am very intrigued the reasons why Reverte is so indulgent when it comes time to talk about his films. Promotion campaign, love for the original work or just a way to get out of trouble? The script tells through dialogues what it should tell through images: the characters are continually telling each other their adventures and tying up the loose threads of the wefts in a blatantly ineffective way.
The movie script gathers more plots than it is capable of holding, forgetting some along the way. It’s not that it needs a revision: it’s that the four writers who have worked on it should have started over trying to make it less messy. A simple rereading reveals its many, many errors in form. The dialogues are obvious and without spark, the characters mere stereotypesabsolutely hilarious situations.
This wants to be a very serious movie, but sometimes it stays in José Mota’s sketch without intending it. The team of computer priests armed to the teeth, the hacker breaking into the Pope’s laptop, the deaths of chichinabo, Jorge Sanz as a thief… The adaptations are unrewarding because what works in the original novel does not have to translate well to the screen, but someone must have noticed that the movie was not working.
With sin conceived
‘The skin of the drum’ is a thriller without emotion, which goes with dead calm and advances in history based on unnatural accelerations. Note aside deserves the protagonist, a clerical James Bond that he has time to shake down villains, flirt with churchgoers and unravel mysteries. The typical character who in a novel is great and charismatic but in the cinema completely cuts off all the suspension of disbelief.
This is the second adaptation of the original book: first came the series ‘Quart, el hombre de Roma’, which was broadcast on Antena 3 and didn’t have much better luck either. Maybe just Admittedly, not all works are easily adaptable to the big screen. In the case of Reverte, of course, not even Roman Polanski or Enrique Urbizu have been able to get all the chicha out of him.
There are times when adaptations stick too closely to the novel, not realizing that what works on the page may not work on screen. This is the case of this tape, which is missing at the same time plot cuts, smoother tone, and better explanation of what we are seeing.
Unfortunately, ‘La piel del tambor’ falls short of everything it could have been, and leaves behind a topical but strange work, both unintentionally comic and decidedly serious. The worst enemy of this movie is herselfAnd that’s the worst thing that could have happened to him.