Two alternative girls from Barcelona in their early twenties, Belén Barenys and Berta Prieto, writers and stars of the series ‘Self-Defense’, have achieved what they wanted: much talk about them. Of course, for better and for worse, questioning even the color of their nails, the moral quality of their actions or elevating them to masters of the seventh art.
Rarely did the networks overreact both to a series and to ‘Self-Defense’ and, above all, rarely have his critics demanded so much of him and put so much magnifying glass on him. Anyone would say that it is the last of Sorrentino or that Godard has been reborn. It may seem cliché, but perhaps paradoxically, more is demanded of someone young than someone experienced who borders on him in his work and, of course, always more reproach for girls than for boys, that’s for sure.
Of ‘Self-defense’ it has been said that it does not have a class look, that it only portrays from privilege, that it is frivolous, that it leaves men in general bad, that it is groundbreaking when it repeats things already seen before, that it would be more revolutionary if it portrayed more tenderness and less cynicismwhich whitens the use of drugs, which does not represent youth, which gives a bad image of it… So many things have been said that one comes to wonder if ‘Self-Defense’ is not being directly demanded to be a series that it is not or, worse still, that it is all the series at the same time.
Would anyone ever think of criticizing a Third Reich series that always portrays Hitler as a man and is always surrounded by men (and no, it’s not a malicious comparison)? Or ask a western movie to justify all the shots of him? whatWe have asked the characters of ‘White Lotus’ ask for forgiveness for all your sins? Rather not.
Is too much demanded of the series?
Instead, ‘Self-Defense’ is asked for a moral neatness, a class look and an emotional depth that we have not seen in almost any fiction lately and that, moreover, is not what it claims. The most amazing thing about ‘Self-Defense’ is the authenticity with which it parodies the frivolity of its protagonists, be it true or an aberrant exaggeration, and in that doubt lies the anger that it gives -and wants to give- to its viewers. The confusion is in hating the actresses and scriptwriters instead of the protagonists, as if you suddenly blamed the director of Seven of serial murders.
Furthermore, even when Berta and Belén are unpresentable, they make you laugh because of how they play with the limits of what their victims can bear or spectators and, above all, for how they act as a mirror for those who are even more cretinous.
Berta and Belén do what many men have done and represented for many years: take advantage of women for their benefit, sometimes deceiving them, sometimes simply humiliating them. But, in many cases, with an important difference in relation to many male cases that we have seen previously: in many cases the boys who suffer from it deserve it. Or if not, let’s zoom in on the cheap songwriter who sings a song after fucking or the harassing filmmaker who makes you the artist’s envelope to fuck.
A portrait of modern egoism
but even When their victims do not deserve their misdeeds, since when is kindness demanded from some protagonists, that you like them? What is less profound than complacency? Belén and Berta make you laugh and make you vibrate with their little adventures. After all, his series is a story of adventures and misadventures of young people from a very specific area (the alternative of the capital of Barcelona), linked to the artist and with a good average of little money, who in the end is also the one who has Filmin and not any other platform.
‘Self defense’ It could be a feminist revenge of the tostonazo world of the artisteo -and in part it is- but it is something else. It is a punk allegation and a portrait of the prevailing nihilism and egoism, that if it portrayed something more revolutionary or supportive, it would surely not be as accurate, and if it focused on more popular classes, it would probably seek some kind of political-social justification for the excesses. Great cinematography, fine music and one of the most authentic interpretations of young girls to be seen, trucutru, trucutrueven at the level of Ana Castillo in ‘La llamada’…
‘Self-defense’ is a very good portrait, exaggerated but credible like Valle Inclán’s bohemian Madrid, but of the alternative beautiful people of Barcelona who, deep down, are not so different from what they were 20 years ago, even though they communicate with stickers and he keeps going to the same clubs and festivals. Because no one remembers a time when young people or adults dedicated themselves to saving the world and being majestic and altruistic.