Friendship, tenderness and a pinch of mystery go hand in hand in the first series written and directed by Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, an estimable fiction full of excellent performances
It is inevitable to get excited when seeing ‘The ones in the last row’. And it is not because it is a sappy or especially dramatic series, on the contrary, it is one of those comforting productions, that one sees outlining a smile, but because of the raw truth that it exposes to the viewer. Under this title lies the first series created, written and directed by Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, author of films such as ‘Gordos’ or ‘AzulOscuroCasiNegro’, which landed on Netflix last Friday. Its premise is simple: every year Sara (Itsaso Arana), Alma (Mónica Miranda), Carol (Maria Rodríguez Soto), Leo (Mariona Terés) and Olga (Godeliv Van den Brandt), a group of five friends close to forty , who have been in contact since high school, take a week’s vacation together to unwind. This summer’s, however, will be different: one of them has been diagnosed with cancer and soon she will have to start the first cycle of chemotherapy.
Aware of this, the five friends make several decisions before facing the annual trip, which this time will take place just the week before the start of treatment: they will shave their heads, they will not talk about the disease and each of them will introduce a box a piece of paper with an action or a wish that they would like to carry out before they die. Already on the Cadiz coast, each day they will be extracting one of them and all must comply with it. Thus begins a journey of friendship, full of challenges, experiences and self-discovery, which leads the protagonists to rethink their own lives, face their fears, leave their comfort zone and face the dreaded ‘what if?’ decisions that, had they been made, could have completely changed their lives.
Visually ambitious and with very successful formal decisions – the way of capturing telephone conversations, the jumps to the past deliciously integrated into the present or the way in which it plays with what has really happened and what has not are an example of it – , yes, there is an aspect that can put off more than one viewer and it is that tone like a summer beer commercial that can be glimpsed in certain sequences and to which songs, on the other hand, incontestable, contribute, such as ‘Qué nos va a pass’, from The Good Life; ‘Berlin u5’, by Zahara, or ‘Too Many Drugs’, ‘Julio Iglesias’ or ‘Mamá’, by Rigoberta Bandini. Yes, the three come to sound at some point in the series -one, even, on a couple of occasions- and Paula Ribó herself has a funny cameo in one of the six episodes that make up the fiction.
Saved that hurdle, what remains is a sincere and exciting series, which oozes truth from all sides and, using the disease as a pretext -the mystery about who of the five is affected is almost irrelevant, although the closure is also perfect-, touches on all kinds of issues around human relationships, from friendship, to family, through relationships, sexuality, desire, psychological abuse -the moment that Carol and her partner star in is chilling , hundreds of kilometers away around a weight scale connected to the internet-, the search for new experiences, the doubts between taking risks and changing things or adjusting to the life one has built…
In that truth, some actresses who are exceptionally well have everything to do with it. Not a single sentence is out of tune, even though on occasion the viewer is forced to suspend disbelief because a dialogue or an action is not entirely realistic – breaking and entering is an example – and the five protagonists often cross the screen with a spontaneity and freshness difficult to see. Undoubtedly, the choice of casting, with faces not so well known to the general public, contributes to the viewer seeing five real women in the gang. That the fiction is truffled with cameos like those of Macarena García, Antonio de la Torre -note the nod to ‘Cousins’-, Michelle Jenner or Carmen Machi does nothing more than raise the bar of a series that is easily tasted in a couple of sessions, with chapters of about 45 minutes in length.
Sánchez Arévalo has told in recent interviews that he had “an outstanding debt with the female universe” and that his greatest ambition was “to create a series that if you didn’t know who was behind it, you would believe it was a woman.” There is no doubt that she has succeeded.
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