In November 1994, the CIS published a study entitled “Regional Stereotypes” which collected what was thought of the inhabitants of each Spanish autonomous community. This report put into words and data all the clichés perpetuated from generation to generation. You know, an Andalusian is “cheerful, funny, talkative and hospitable”, according to the adjectives given in the survey; while a Basque was “strong, brutal, violent and (a little) noble”.
The Basque’s rudeness and his few words remain a stereotype 30 years later. But there is a new generation of filmmakers who have shown, and continue to do so, that these generalizations are as false as they are unfair. Directors like Jon Garaño, Aitor Arregi, Jose Mari Goenaga or Asier Altuna, who have demonstrated a sensitivity and ways of storytelling that break not only with the Basque prototype, but also with that of masculinity usually associated with directors ( men). They did it in titles like Loreak either Love, sensitive and delicate films. Even fragile. They do not regret it, but have made this new sensitivity their virtue.
In his films, the intimate becomes political, and he does so through intrigues that touch his territory and his history. The same thing that David Pérez Sañudo did in his excellent debut, Ann, the story of a mother who searches for her daughter in a context of expropriation of houses in an industrial area of the Basque Country where daily violence has exploded amid demonstrations against the construction of what is called Y vasca, a project railway which has marked the lives of many Basque families. Sañudo took this feeling from his companions and crossed it with a story where the wounds of ETA were present even if they were not obvious.
The same thing happens in his second film, The last romantics, the adaptation of the novel by Txani Rodríguez – rewritten with Marina Parés – and which tells with exquisite sensitivity the solitary life of a woman – the wonderful Miren Gaztañaga – who only finds company in calls to Renfe customer service and at a neighbor. But the story of this film only makes sense in this city and in Euskadi. Their way of experiencing, behind closed doors, the scars of industrial cities which have seen their factories close, leaving everyone stranded. It is all this that elevates his proposition and what connects it to that of all these names mentioned above.
“There is something that we really like to say, which is that this film could take place anywhere, but it takes place in Euskadi, and there is a way of behaving, a way of communicating, which has to do with certain particularities of the way of communication, even within the same family and which are marked by the intensity of the political conflict”, explains David Pérez Sañudo during the filming of his new film, butter remover. His way of telling always seeks to ensure that “the conflict does not totalize the entire meaning of Basque, which tends to happen”.
This is why he clearly says, and it is in his film, that he likes what we call the “new Basque cinema of feelings”, and he cites Loreak either Amama as “films which, in a certain way, allowed us to look at the territory differently”. A concept you read about in the book Basque cinema, a political and cultural history, by María Pilar Rodríguez and Rob Stone. A cinema in Basque, of quality, and with feelings at the center but without ignoring the particularities of the political and cultural context of Euskadi.
If “Loreak” or “Amama” did not exist, I think there would be no “The Last Romantics”. It is something that is not sought after, but rather the collective imagination of our generation which is imbued with it.
David Pérez Sanudo
— Director
Even if it is difficult for him to identify with this term, for a question of “modesty of feeling part of something”, he admits that “if it did not exist, for example, Loreak either “Amama”, believes that “this would not exist The Last Romantics“. “It’s something we don’t look for, but I really see it and I think about it afterwards and there is something in the collective imagination, or in the way of thinking of our generation, which is imbued with what they did before,” he said. adds.
Although the project was born from a proposal from its producers, he quickly felt linked by the post-industrial context that his family experienced. Places like Guernica, where they filmed, or Llodio, where the novel takes place, “those places which, at one point, were prosperous in the 80s and 90s, with a very strong industrial component, salaries more or less less stable and a social activity which today does not exist, and that they had to change and adapt to another type of life.
This means that its protagonist ends up being conditioned by her environment, which has always interested the director and his co-writer, who are looking for these “relations between the individual and the context, between the particular and the collective”. Also “everything that concerns the dynamics and power relations in the most institutional spheres, between the employee and the business manager”. It appears here with these unions and their strike, the only way for the protagonist to connect to the collective in an individualistic and solitary society.
Places where we don’t usually watch Spanish cinema, which, for Pérez Sañudo, has to do with a subject that is under debate: “Where is cinema made?” “I think it also has a lot to do with the concerns of those who make films and those who allow a certain type of film to be made. I am specifically referring to platforms or people who work on-chain. The power mechanisms of the industry. Maybe that’s why there’s less space. I don’t know if I’m right, but I have a feeling that might have something to do with it,” he says.
There is in The Last Romantics a demand from the collective that its director does not hide. “It seems to me that society today is more individualistic and this affects the ways of socializing and even claiming something. I have the impression that before, when there were 500 workers in a factory, we saw that their problems could be more similar. Now, because of the individualization and particularization of leisure, something that the cell phone also produces, which also deteriorates the collective and directs us towards something more individualistic”, he believes, even if this does not not enough for its protagonist, “this community does not serve him well to serve forward, and this refers to a phrase from the philosopher Roberto Espósito, who says that community is impossible, but it is necessary.
