– Even the dogs deliver outstanding performances in this new funny and erratic – multiple – x-ray of human ridiculousness, which Cesc Gay once again smacks us in the face
Maribel Verdú, Nora Navas and Alexandra Jiménez in Stories Not to Be Told
The legendary Cecil B. DeMille said that a film should start with an earthquake and continue to grow in emotion and intensity until the end. Cesc Gay apply the same saying and in his new film, Historias para no contar [+leggi anche:
trailer
intervista: Cesc Gay
scheda film]an urban and ensemble comedy composed of five independent parts, begins with perhaps the most powerful one, which promises an hour and a half of wit and comedy, but this desire is not fully satisfied because after the initial earthquake of laughter there is not one equally intensely funny and original tsunami.
Presented in the Special Presentations section of the Toronto Film Festivalbefore being screened at the 70th RTVE gala San Sebastian International Film Festival (where his previous feature film, Sentimental [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Cesc Gay
scheda film]in 2020), Historias para no contar (a title that seems to pay homage to the television series Historias para no dormir by the great Chicho Ibáñez Serrador) offers viewers one of the most select casts in Spanish cinema, with names such as Antonio de la Torre, Maribel Verdu And JosAnd Coronadoamong many.
Coronado is the protagonist of the weakest episode of a film that can be enjoyed with the same lightness with which one leafs through a furniture magazine (the houses, cafés and super markets where the scenes take place could be defined as cute), while De la Torre – along with a wonderful Maria Leorno and to a Alex Brendemühl that you would take to a desert island – and the duo Chino Darin – Anna Castillo tear the biggest smiles in the two segments that open the film, the first of which is pure sitcom, with a surprising Javier Rey which seems to have fed on the filmography of Cary Grant.
But, apart from this inhomogeneity throughout the film, Historias para no contar is a film with the seal of Cesc Gay, carried with super pride: it is based on sparkling and recognizable dialogues, it once again plunges the scalpel into the folds of the human personality and its hidden corners, especially when it comes to love relationships, friendship and… professional rivalry.
The miseries that are an integral part of every human being are portrayed by the director together with his usual co-writer Tomas Aragay in the sketches grouped in this film: an episodic structure already used by this artistic duo in A pistol in each hand [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film], ten years ago. Jealousy, lying, envy, manipulation, distrust, prejudice, cowardice, invasion of others’ privacy, ridicule and gossip are just some of the pearls set in this gallery of little deadly sins designed to make us laugh at ourselves.
Historias para no contar is produced – as always in Cesc Gay’s films – by Martha Esteban for a Impossible Films and Nocontarfilm AIE, with the participation of RTVE extension, Movistar Plus+ And Television of Catalonia. It will be released in Spanish theaters by Filmax on November 25th.
(Translated from Spanish)