{"id":3466,"date":"2017-03-17T09:29:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T08:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.com\/malaga-festival-opens-with-the-bar-paroxysm-among-beers\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T02:29:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T00:29:47","slug":"malaga-festival-opens-with-the-bar-paroxysm-among-beers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/malaga-festival-opens-with-the-bar-paroxysm-among-beers\/","title":{"rendered":"Malaga Festival opens with \u2018El Bar\u2019, paroxysm and beer."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Turning things around usually works. If not, a good slap with a bitch slap is not a bad option either. \u00c1lex de la Iglesia<\/strong> has been doing this with his stories and characters ever since another \u00c1lex, Angulo, asked for \"a nice cold mirinda\". Thus began Mirindas asesinas<\/em> (1991), the short film that introduced to society this filmmaker determined to see the funniest side of horror and the most terrifying side of comedy. <\/p>\n

The quiet man who approaches the bar of that dingy watering hole as just another patron and then shoots himself in the face with the staff is not so different from the characters locked up in EL Bar, the film that opens, amidst the crowds and delays, the 20th edition of the Malaga Festival. Because the face we show when we order a fanta, a ca\u00f1a or bravas potatoes is just that, a mask. \u201cGod bless that mask, it makes life bearable, otherwise we would kill each other,\u201d says the filmmaker. And rightly so. \u201cMan is a wild animal domesticated by experience, which tells him that survival is only possible if he is part of a tribe. That\u2019s what society is all about, putting up with each other. When fear comes, you are capable of anything to survive\u201d. And in El Bar, fear is present in the most unexpected way possible. <\/p>\n

The archetypes that coincide in this enclosed space (\u201cJorge Guerricaecheverr\u00eda and I went to the Palentino and saw who came in: the street sweeper, the poor man with the cartons, the director of a bank branch, a strange salesman\u2026\u201d), hide other faces, which come to light at the first sign of change: the first of them who sets foot outside the dingy Madrid tavern where they meet gets shot from outside. The second one, too. The others are locked in, with their problems, their prejudices and their fears, without really knowing how or why. <\/p>\n

A comic, shocking and provocative starting point, like that of other films by De la Iglesia, which allows him to try new things. \"I like films to be a challenge for me, to learn something new by making them. I take the profession as a combat with myself, I want to find out what things make it difficult for me.\" Even at the risk of getting KO'd in the first round. \"I really enjoyed how complex it was on a technical and planning level, how claustrophobic the space<\/strong> was.\" <\/p>\n

So far, the first third of the film is a comedy with surprising elements, all in order. But (there is always a but), De la Iglesia is not satisfied with that, as he has never been: his provocative approaches are always looking for something more, that twist or that slap in the face, even if it is at the expense of the viewer's breath and the health of his characters. Do you enjoy making your protagonists suffer? \"That comes from proto-agony, the one who suffers the most, who can be none other than the protagonist. There is a point of revenge, of cynical irony with respect to the character. But there is also a lot of affection. So much so as to imagine all kinds of mischief, injuries and savagery. \"I really like that the viewer enjoys seeing how the characters suffer more than he does. I find that liberating. Like when you come out of a nightmare. That's a feeling I really like in cinema.\" Carmen Machi<\/strong>, Secun de la Rosa, Mario Casas<\/strong> and Blanca Su\u00e1rez<\/strong>, devoted to the cause of \"he who loses, dies\", make their efforts to defend characters always on the tightrope. <\/p>\n

De la Iglesia\u2019s beginnings, that kamikaze drive to extract comedy from the wildest situations, should be a good mirror in which to look at the authors of Maniac Tales, a set of five short films produced by Kike Mesa and united through a confusing narration that encompasses them all. The excuse for the presence in Malaga of a product that is clearly amateur and filmed in English, even though it is out of competition, is that the central story was filmed in La Equitativa, an iconic building in the city. As in any collective film, there are glimpses of originality and talent in some of the pieces, especially in Enrique Garc\u00eda\u2019s El momento perfecto, but the succession of terrifying stories at times gives more (involuntary) laughter than real fear. For the first day of the festival, the appetizer turned out to be a bit indigestible. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The former president of the Film Academy, \u00c1lex de la Iglesia opens the 20th edition of the Malaga Festival with his latest film, ‘El Bar’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":{"post-subtitle":"The former president of the Film Academy, \u00c1lex de la Iglesia opens the 20th edition of the Malaga Festival with his latest film, 'El Bar'."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3466"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7996,"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3466\/revisions\/7996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pokeepsiefilms.tipomedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}