Saura’s early 80s movie has something of the trashy aesthetic that would colonise Spanish cinema with early Almodovar and the Movida Madrileña. Its Bonnie & Clyde narrative is set on the poor outskirts of Madrid, dusty tower blocks surrounded by waste land, a city starting to expand but not in any hurry. Pablo and Angela are two kids who are part of a gang which goes on a crime spree, stealing from institutions and people unprepared for their anarchic violence. All the members of the gang look more likely to be in a band than hard bitten criminals, and there are several scenes which take place, a la Scorsese, in pared-down 80s discotecas. Music is important to the group, and it is perhaps worth noting how their identity is formed in large part by Spanish, rather than Anglo-Saxon music. When the gang’s ambitions turn to the bigger fish of taking down a bank, disaster inevitably follows. But it seems clear that the director’s interest is less in the criminal elements of the movie and more in portraying a new Spanish generation, one that has become apolitical, takes drugs, doesn’t give a fuck. It feels as though it might have been influenced by Mean Streets. The stripped down, handheld aesthetic, with its washed-out colour palette and anti-heroes must have felt like a shot of pure modernity in the post-Franco era.
Nb -this IMDB note seems worth sharing: Jose Antonio Valdelomar González (Pablo) was recruited by Saura in a casting for non-professional actors. He was paid US$3,000. In 1992 he was found dead of a heroin overdose at Carabanchel prison (Madrid), where he was arrested for robbing a bank.
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