Rebellion is like sex; When you reach a certain age, the practice becomes difficult, the kidneys begin to ache and the legs tremble with need. This is when we become conservative and start to smell like canned sardines. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself, but these are things that come to mind after seeing I am rebellious, the documentary film of my admired Paloma Concejero.
When Jeanette turned the rebellion into an anthem with the help of Manuel Alejandro, I was still a micurria in shorts who threw stones at cats and danced to the yes-yes groups every time they came on TV: Los Mitos, Los Pasos, Modules, Los Angeles… in short, this whole bunch of modern groups who imitated the Beatles and whose songs I shook on the eskay sofa like an epileptic. We are talking about a shabby Spain, in black and white, where people masturbated with rosaries transformed into ejaculations drowned out by repression. Agggggh!
Because the sexual repression of the time was one of the identity marks of the rancid Franco regime which seemed to have no end. Outside, on the other side of the Pyrenees, things were different. Free love was practiced, and the Beatles and the Stones provided a soundtrack to a youth who, carried away by the cramps of rebellion, took to the streets of Paris and beyond: Mexico, California, the hippies, LSD; a new world that has blossomed and here without feeling the smoke. That’s where Jeanette arrived with her young girl’s voice and her delicacy when it came to interpretation. And we all fell in love with it.
From this ceremony, taking Jeanette as a common thread, Paloma Concejero threaded the pearls of a necklace of music and memories, a jewel where the rhythm of the editing is the essence of a fire that bursts into each image. It features animations by Álvaro Ortega which are a success with a nod to Saul Bass included in the credits. But I don’t want to reveal the surprises this documentary has in store, because I’m going to ask you to see it; especially those who grew up listening to a woman who recreated the world that grew within her, also showing us her fragility, that of her voice and that of the world; yours, ours and that of Paloma Concejero; a woman who was born in the wrong country and who was born here, in this country that is so difficult and with such crude grammar towards art.
Paloma did enormous work, for years, working on the piece with humility, overcoming stumbles, gargajos, envy and silences. All together. She is rebellious, and so am I; That’s why I love everything she does, and in the case of her latest documentary, I can sit for over two hours, without moving from my seat, without my damn prostate screaming at me to get up and to baptize the latrines. It rejuvenates me and takes away the smell of canned sardines. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself.
