volveréis (w&d jonás trueba, w. itsaso arana y vito sanz)

Trueba’s film La virgen de agosto was a sleeper hit in the Hispanic universe. Its tone was laconic, neo-romantic and far more hippy than anything by Madrid’s most famous filmmaker. It was also a love letter to Madrid, his native city, as is Volveréis (You’ll Be Back). The lead characters are Madrileño bohos, a filmmaker and an actor who have decided to end their fifteen year personal relationship, without rancour. They might work together in the future or they might not. Or indeed, they might be working together now, as Alex crops up in the film Ale has directed and is now editing. Or is that actually the film we are now watching? The meta-element of Volveréis is not shied away from. At the same time this is a film about love, about splitting up, about subsisting as artists in the capital. The only other filmmaker I know who lived in Madrid had to move out because rents were unaffordable, which is something the couple realise as they go looking for two new places to live. (One each.) The Maguffin is a party which they plan to hold to celebrate their separation, taking their inspiration from Ale’s father (played by Trueba’s actual father),  who gives his daughter Kierkegaard to read. As the film progress the storyline becomes less and less linear. It’s not clear if scenes are happening in the future after they have split up, or after they have decided not to split up, or in the present as they continue to debate the idea of splitting up. Or indeed whether the scenes are occurring within the matrix of Ale’s film itself, which might or might not be the film we are watching. The edit becomes more jagged and the film teeters somewhere between genius and tedium. The lead actors, Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz are given screenwriting credits, and it’s hard to tell how far the film’s confusion is a result of precision or chaos in the process of its creation. It would be intriguing to see a script and find out how much of the second half of the film was finalised in the edit. There’s something both gratingly bourgeois about all this and yet radically, formally exciting.