'Ivan & Hadoum': A Little Great Love Story

How refreshing it is to see a bright film. This Tuesday, it arrived at the discreet day of the official section with 'Iván & Hadoum', a film ... that, with the naturalness of stories told without pretentiousness, has earned strong applause. It is the debut feature by Ian de la Rosa from Granada ('Veneno'), and it narrates the relationship between a trans boy and a young Hispanic-Moroccan girl against the backdrop of the sea of plastic greenhouses in Almería. What's novel about this romantic tale is that, despite what the synopsis might suggest, it is not just another film about identity or gender change. That story has already been told, so the filmmaker and screenwriter moves several steps forward and presents us with a plain love story, universal and delightful, which also addresses the precariousness and working conditions in the field.

It's hard not to think of 'Romeo and Juliet' in this queer, rural version which, in the hands of Ian de la Rosa, strips away melodrama and tragedy to tell us, with the simplicity of well-told stories, about the passionate encounter between two young people, separated by their families, but especially by their jobs. He aspires to be a warehouse boy at the packaging plant of the greenhouse where she has started working as an operator. And the sale of the company to the 'Germans' will put them in different positions on the food chain of exploitation.

From there, we follow their relationship, portrayed with a captivating honesty. As much as its protagonists, the newcomers Silver Chicón and Herminia Loh, who bring a lot of themselves to their characters. Another revival of neorealist principles, like the Mexican 'El guardián' also seen at the festival, but here with the ability to move us with the truth. Even though it's fiction. It's wonderful when a story captivates you with something as simple as sincere love, capable of turning the small into a great film. The silent revolution of 'Iván & Hadoum', which came from Berlin with a side prize, has been tagged as the best we've seen so far at the Malaga Festival.

'Mala bestia' **

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The other two films of the day had in common their nature as fables. Both failed. The one that caught the eye was ‘Mala bestia’, the debut of a director with cinema in mind, Bàrbara Farré, a talent for creating atmospheres, although not so much for providing a plot to support them. It's a pity because her starting point was brilliant: the fear of growing up and that moment when the woman emerges in the body of a girl. The unknown María Schwinning is that girl capable of expressing innocence and strength at the same time, but all these successes wander among more symbolic images than script. The idea wears out in its own conceptual stylization and in a stylistic exercise that, allied with fantasy, is capable of fascinating visually – the hospice, the forest... – and boring in terms of plot. Like its protagonist, the film has the enemy within.

'Mil pedazos' *

The last release came from Chile, ‘Mil Pedazos’. So fragmented, that even the film struggles to piece them together coherently. Here the central theme is mourning. That of a couple with communication issues who embark on a journey hoping to improve, but suffer an accident in which they lose their only daughter. From there, nothing. Director Sergio Castro shows the collapse of these disconnected parents with beautiful and sad cinematography that mirrors their desperate drama. And the desert as a symbol of the solitude of mourning and the irrecoverable tragedy. A personal devastation in which the existentialist metaphor drowns these aimless characters. No script.