If El Bar was a real success in Spain, appearing in the Top 10 of the best Spanish films 2017, only Netflix decided to distribute it to the French public. This work by Alex de la Iglesia plunges us intoa cynical and heavy behind closed doors, in the heart of a Madrid café. A crazy thriller that follows characters with completely different personalities, who will have to cohabit and try to get out alive…
A closed door between absurdity and anguish
Madrid city center, in a bar, around 9am. Eight unknowns. The owner, the bartender, a crazy homeless man, a young woman, a businessman… All this little world is part of the few morning customers of this Spanish café. One of them comes out and is immediately shot in the head.
By who? What for? How will those still inside react? Besides, where is the real danger? Outside… or in it?
In this closed door with an increasingly heavy atmosphere, the personalities of the characters are gradually revealed… Fear brings out their darkest sides. How will they deal with the unexpected, the danger, the rising tension, the thirst for survival?
Alex de la Iglesia encloses the viewer with his characters. The more time passes, the deeper we sink into the gloomy. From the bar, we go to the basement, then to the sewers … The atmosphere is tense, the scenery darkens, the tension rises. We hesitate to take sides. It is difficult to attach oneself to the protagonists. Who is right? What would we do in their place?
The cinema of Iglesia
We find the madness and absurdity of Spanish cinema that Alex de la Iglesia masters perfectly. It borders on horror, sometimes gore. But we want to know how the characters will get out of the situation.
The few lengths are compensated by last-minute twists. The spectator is kept in suspense. However, we have the feeling that the characters could have been better worked. The acting is excellent, but the director uses classic clichés : a businessman, an office worker, a young woman, a young hipster, a madman… We find dominant-dominated: the manager and her employee, an armed man facing the other unarmed …No outside authority is there to control the situation. The characters fend for themselves and whoever has the "solution" has the power…. It's classic, but the atmosphere is so offbeat that we stay caught up in the thread of the story.
Alex de la Iglesia does not hesitate to make his viewer uncomfortable, by making his characters live all kinds of disturbing situations.We sometimes feel a lack of meaning in the unfolding of the plot. Some facts occur, then remain unresolved… and the end falls like a hair on the soup… But despite everything, this film will not leave anyone indifferent!
A heavy scenario, in a heavy news
From the first minutes, there are allusions to terrorism. We read the paranoia on the faces of the characters. But the sequence of events takes us on a completely different track. No more reassuring. The early shot of the bearded young man immediately suspected could have been avoided, however.
This Argentine-Spanish thriller confronts us with our own anxieties. The director pushes the characters to their limits and lets their survival instincts direct their behaviors. Surviving becomes the number 1 priority and the dark side of these ordinary people takes precedence over the spirit of solidarity…
