By Mónica Delgado
When did the young left their aspirations and how did their longing was tossed to the water in a veil of alienation and inaction? Going beyond the consequences of unemployment and economic crisis in Spain, what Jaime Rosales shows in the development of his film is an inquiry, from certain keys, of the motivations of two characters in their experience of being parents, despite their twenty years of more, through the strike and living on expenses of chance and money falling from the sky.
Unlike some films of social cut (like Ken Loach films, in the treatment of causes and consequences of the system) Hermosa Juventud isn’t about showing the unemployment as part of an x-ray of crisis from this youngsters without future, but to propose more attention to the disenchantment of this boys towards life, where nothing exists but the now and the attraction of the easy.
The use of digital, in texture, allows Rosales to dialogue with the technology of immediacy, since in some moments the film puts images of social media applications that make even clearer the sensibility of these characters, how do they connect and how do they live reality. This simulacra of the world, that despite the shortcomings, makes money take a second level, where getting it is not a priority but a good that is needed once in a while. There’s also a treatment that shows a narrative rupture, that is the scene of the preparations to the recording of a porn flick, and that Rosales inserts in a documentary interview way, where the characters reflect on this sort of neglect, confronting some ingenuity to the act of obtaining money in a fast, effortless way. And that moment of Hermosa Juventud becomes the key of all the footage, taking a sarcastic, pessimistic tone, to construct a reading of this new “feeling structure” of crisis.
Un Certain Regard
Director: Jaime Rosales
Reparto: Ingrid García Jonsson, Carlos Rodríguez, Inma Nieto
Production Company: Fresdeval Films
Spain/France
2014