'Maspalomas': back in the closet

The 73rd edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival kicked off this Friday with the opening gala featuring the Argentine neo-noir thriller 27 Noches by Daniel Hendler, and with the first day seeing Fernando Colomo return with Las delicias del jardín , a pictorial comedy starring himself, his son Pablo Colomo, who is making his acting debut, Carmen Machi and Brays Efe . San Sebastian is traditionally the setting for the premiere of many of the films that will mark the year for Spanish cinema and which we will see compete in the Goya Awards, which will be held this February in Barcelona. And one of the big contenders will be Maspalomas , the latest film by Aitor Arregi and José Mari Goenaga ( Loreak , La trinchera infinita , Cristóbal Balenciaga ), which is competing for the Concha de Oro and was presented this Saturday at the Kursaal in San Sebastian.

Set, as its title reveals, in Maspalomas, the Gran Canaria beach at the epicenter of the LGBTI movement in Spain, this unique drama features one of the most pulse-pounding openings in cinema in recent years , starring the endearing Kandido Uranga . Uranga plays Xanti, a homosexual septuagenarian who has just split up from his partner and moves to Maspalomas, to the apartment of his friend Ramón ( Zorion Eguileor ).

Maspalomas is presented as the El Dorado of the gay universe , a place where different generations coexist - more or less - harmoniously, where taboos disappear and sexual freedom is experienced without barriers and with absolute naturalness. We meet Xanti while he is cruising in the dunes of Maspalomas, and the directors' camera shows bodies with total frankness , exploring desire in the light of day, but also at night, in the corridors of darkrooms and saunas. The directors' approach to these spaces is direct, daring and stripped of the sordidness with which they are often portrayed, and this shared and everyday concept of sex is made commonplace, as an epitome of the sexual freedom of its protagonist and of a community often relegated in old age to the inside of a closet.

Because while we could review hundreds of prestigious gay-themed films in recent decades—I'm thinking of Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together (1997); Robin Campillo's 120 Beats Per Minute (2017); Andre Haigh's Weekend (2011); or much of Almodóvar's cinema— homosexuality in later life has been a more virgin territory in cinema. In this regard, in recent years the concept of coming out has been brought into the public conversation: those who were pioneers in the fight for LGBT rights and who experienced repression—whether political, under Franco's regime, social, or even medical (until 1973, the DSM, the world-renowned Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders, did not eliminate homosexuality as a mental illness and recognized it as a normal variant of human sexuality)—once again, when they need residential care, they hide their identity for fear of rejection.

Outside of Maspalomas, the homosexual Eden, the world is full of closets ; and the hardest to overcome is the mental one. Maspalomas, which is set in 2019, before the Covid pandemic, plays on the contrast between the colorful and festive atmosphere of the Canary Islands beach and the gray everyday life of that other part of the gay community that cannot live their identity in full freedom. Also exemplified are the relationships many of these men have with the families they created to fit in socially: Xanti reunites with his daughter, Nerea ( Nagore Aranburu ), with whom he hasn't spoken for years and who hasn't forgiven him for "abandoning" them to live with another man. And the relationships with his own contemporaries, educated during the Franco regime with a much more punitive view of sexuality. But it also offers hope that if institutions change—and they do so very slowly and often through individual efforts—people can also change our perspective.

Maspalomas is a delicate and moving film supported by the excellent work of its two lead actors, Uranga and José Ramón Soroiz, who immediately generate empathy. They are the representation of antithetical characters, but through the prism and details provided by the directors, their characters are filled with nuances and ambiguities. Outside of Maspalomas, men's bodies are also touched and exposed, but by stripping away meaning and rebelling against the norm, they are also immune to criticism and isolation.

Arregi and Goenaga 's film takes the risk of the abrupt tonal shift required to confront the two sides of the divide: the golden dunes and the shimmering sea of ​​the Canary Islands postcard—the moment of the protagonist's bath to the rhythm of Franco Batiato being beautiful—are always more pleasing to the eye than, say, the gotelé wall of a nursing home in the interior of the peninsula. With Maspalomas, Arregi and Goenaga, two members of the creative trio Moriarti, demonstrate that no time or setting can resist them and that they are building a solid filmography, as if they were the cinematic heirs of their fellow countryman Cristóbal Balenciaga whom they portrayed: a mastery without fuss.

Maspalomas will hit theaters on September 26th.