The Laws of the Border
What I liked most about the film is that it does not try to copy quinqui cinema in a dirty or purely nostalgic way, but to remember it from another place, more romantic, brighter and also more aware that it is looking at a lost time. From the beginning it took me to that imaginary of the late seventies and early eighties: neighborhoods, motorbikes, robberies, streets, wastelands, social classes touching one another and a youth that seems to live with the feeling that the future does not exist. But it does not do so as a harsh documentary, but as a summer memory of desire, danger and discovery.
The story works very well because it is told through the eyes of someone entering a world that does not belong to him. Nacho is the correct, shy, awkward boy from an orderly family who suddenly discovers an invisible border: on the other side are Zarco and Tere, the gang, the street, speed, crime, the seduction of the forbidden. That idea of crossing a line seems very powerful to me. It is not only moving from one neighborhood to another or from one social class to another; it is entering a fantasy of freedom that is also very much a trap. And the film understands that mixture of fascination and fear very well.
I especially liked the coming-of-age tone. There is crime, yes, and there are robberies, chases and violence, but deep down the sentimental education of a boy who begins to look at the world differently carries a lot of weight. Desire for Tere, admiration for Zarco, the need to belong to something and the shame of his previous life push Nacho toward a transformation that is both exciting and sad. Because we have all had that age when someone seemed like the doorway into a more intense life, even if that doorway also led to a dangerous place.
The period atmosphere is one of its great pleasures. The music, clothes, cars, bars, streets and that air of a Spain recently emerging from a gray era are very well integrated. The seventies soundtrack does not appear only as decoration, but as a way of giving pulse to that world. There are songs that work almost like emotional fuel, making the robberies, glances and escapes feel like youthful adventure. The film has nostalgia, but not dead nostalgia: it is nostalgia with rhythm, body, desire to live and the awareness that this life can break at any moment.
The central trio also works very well. Marcos Ruiz conveys Nacho’s insecurity and dazzlement, that way of wanting to seem tougher than he is. Chechu Salgado has presence as Zarco, a mixture of charisma, swagger, danger and a certain mystery of youthful legend. But for me Begoña Vargas is one of the keys. Tere is not only the desired girl or a decorative figure; she has her own force, a look that seems to know more than the others and a mixture of freedom, calculation and tiredness that makes her very attractive. The chemistry between the three sustains much of the film.
Daniel Monzón stylizes quinqui cinema, and that may work more or less depending on the viewer. He does not seek the almost documentary harshness of that cinema, but a more elegant, more popular version, closer to a criminal adventure story with a romantic heart. That choice works for me. It may not be the boldest or most original film, but it has energy, beauty and a very clear way of looking at that border between orderly life and wild life. It does not try to be an exact reproduction of the past, but an emotional recreation of what it meant to look to the other side and think authenticity was there.
Of course it has flaws. Sometimes the romanticism softens the social and criminal background too much. There are moments when danger seems more beautiful than it probably was, and certain parts work more through charm than depth. You can also feel that the film prefers myth to realism, memory to the hard blow, the beauty of recollection to the dirt of experience. But I do not see that as a serious flaw, because that is precisely where its bet lies. It does not want to be the naked truth of quinqui cinema, but a film about how someone remembers the instant when he thought he had touched a different life.
In the end, it left me with a very good feeling. It is entertaining, has rhythm, has music, has characters with chemistry and possesses that air of well-made popular cinema that is very welcome. I liked how it mixes initiation, love, crime, nostalgia and social class without becoming a lesson or a cold exercise in style. It may idealize, it may not be as hard as the world it invokes, but it has soul, color and a very beautiful melancholy. A film that looks at quinqui cinema with affection, turns it into romantic memory and makes that summer of robberies, songs and first wounds seem, for a while, like a forbidden garden.
The story works very well because it is told through the eyes of someone entering a world that does not belong to him. Nacho is the correct, shy, awkward boy from an orderly family who suddenly discovers an invisible border: on the other side are Zarco and Tere, the gang, the street, speed, crime, the seduction of the forbidden. That idea of crossing a line seems very powerful to me. It is not only moving from one neighborhood to another or from one social class to another; it is entering a fantasy of freedom that is also very much a trap. And the film understands that mixture of fascination and fear very well.
I especially liked the coming-of-age tone. There is crime, yes, and there are robberies, chases and violence, but deep down the sentimental education of a boy who begins to look at the world differently carries a lot of weight. Desire for Tere, admiration for Zarco, the need to belong to something and the shame of his previous life push Nacho toward a transformation that is both exciting and sad. Because we have all had that age when someone seemed like the doorway into a more intense life, even if that doorway also led to a dangerous place.
The period atmosphere is one of its great pleasures. The music, clothes, cars, bars, streets and that air of a Spain recently emerging from a gray era are very well integrated. The seventies soundtrack does not appear only as decoration, but as a way of giving pulse to that world. There are songs that work almost like emotional fuel, making the robberies, glances and escapes feel like youthful adventure. The film has nostalgia, but not dead nostalgia: it is nostalgia with rhythm, body, desire to live and the awareness that this life can break at any moment.
The central trio also works very well. Marcos Ruiz conveys Nacho’s insecurity and dazzlement, that way of wanting to seem tougher than he is. Chechu Salgado has presence as Zarco, a mixture of charisma, swagger, danger and a certain mystery of youthful legend. But for me Begoña Vargas is one of the keys. Tere is not only the desired girl or a decorative figure; she has her own force, a look that seems to know more than the others and a mixture of freedom, calculation and tiredness that makes her very attractive. The chemistry between the three sustains much of the film.
Daniel Monzón stylizes quinqui cinema, and that may work more or less depending on the viewer. He does not seek the almost documentary harshness of that cinema, but a more elegant, more popular version, closer to a criminal adventure story with a romantic heart. That choice works for me. It may not be the boldest or most original film, but it has energy, beauty and a very clear way of looking at that border between orderly life and wild life. It does not try to be an exact reproduction of the past, but an emotional recreation of what it meant to look to the other side and think authenticity was there.
Of course it has flaws. Sometimes the romanticism softens the social and criminal background too much. There are moments when danger seems more beautiful than it probably was, and certain parts work more through charm than depth. You can also feel that the film prefers myth to realism, memory to the hard blow, the beauty of recollection to the dirt of experience. But I do not see that as a serious flaw, because that is precisely where its bet lies. It does not want to be the naked truth of quinqui cinema, but a film about how someone remembers the instant when he thought he had touched a different life.
In the end, it left me with a very good feeling. It is entertaining, has rhythm, has music, has characters with chemistry and possesses that air of well-made popular cinema that is very welcome. I liked how it mixes initiation, love, crime, nostalgia and social class without becoming a lesson or a cold exercise in style. It may idealize, it may not be as hard as the world it invokes, but it has soul, color and a very beautiful melancholy. A film that looks at quinqui cinema with affection, turns it into romantic memory and makes that summer of robberies, songs and first wounds seem, for a while, like a forbidden garden.
Mini Review: What I liked most about the film is that it does not try to copy quinqui cinema in a dirty or purely nostalgic way, but to remember it from another place, more romantic, brighter and also more aware that it is looking at a lost time. From the beginning it took me to that imaginary of the late seventies and early eighties: neighborhoods, motorbikes, robberies, streets, wastelands, social classes touching one another and a youth that seems to live...