The debut feature by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa arrives in cinemas, which swept the Malaga Festival with its sensitive look at motherhood and the weight of family heritage
We are parents of our children and, at an age, we are also parents of our parents. Three weeks after ‘Alcarràs’, which is still in second place at the box office, only surpassed by Marvel’s ‘Doctor Strange’, comes ‘Cinco lobitos’, another proof of the strength of female gazes in our cinematography. The debut feature by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa (Barakaldo, 1978) explores issues such as motherhood, illness and the weight of family inheritance in a moving and sensitive way. The film swept the last Malaga Festival, where it won the Biznaga de Oro for the best Spanish film, the Biznaga de Plata for the best screenplay, the acting award ex-aequo for Laia Costa and Susi Sánchez and the Audience Award. Apart from the official list of winners, he also won the Feroz Award from film reporters.
Laia Costa plays a new mother, still sore from her stitches, who is overcome by the challenges of caring for a newborn. her boy
(Mike Bustamante) he’s a theater technician who goes on tour and leaves her alone with little Jone; is what it has to be autonomous. The protagonist makes the decision to leave Madrid and return to the beautiful coastal town of Bizkaia from which she comes. She doesn’t know that, in addition to changing diapers, she will have to take care of parents who are dealing with the disease.
“I have written and directed ‘Cinco lobitos’ thinking that we are two-way children,” says Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, who after the success of the film has shot the romantic comedy ‘Eres tú’ for Netflix. “I was the mother of a boy six years ago. My motherhood changed many things in my life, including the way I viewed my parents. I had become a mother and they had become grandparents. More than an idyllic event, motherhood seemed like a meteorite that devastated everything and caused family relationships to never be the same again. My family had become another. One of those vital changes that have no going back. Because when we are parents, we have the feeling of becoming adults.
unseen witness
One of the merits of ‘Cinco lobitos’ is the tone, which, as in life itself, goes from comedy to drama in the same scene. Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s gaze is always attentive to detail, betting on suggestion instead of sentimental underlining. The protagonists are Basque, they are not used to externalizing or verbalizing their emotions, and that coldness is very useful for a film that touches on many issues under its apparent lightness: the Spain of precariousness, palliative care, the renunciation of women to Professional dreams for motherhood, the machismo of previous generations…
Susi Sánchez and Laia Costa, mother and daughter in ‘Cinco lobitos’.
“As a filmmaker, I like that magic whereby the viewer becomes an invisible witness to other people’s lives,” explains this admirer of Yasujiro Ozu and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s cinema. «I wanted things to happen on an emotional level, even if they were disguised as everyday. We worked a lot with the actors to capture that in a discreet way and that the viewer felt inside that house, in a privileged place.
It is surprising that a first-time director gets interpretations of such depth as those of Laia Costa, perfect as an overwhelmed mother, and veterans Susi Sánchez (with a Basque accent) and Ramón Barea. Alauda Ruiz de Azúa does not judge her characters, but instead observes them with tenderness, without pointing out villains or victims. ‘Cinco lobitos’ shows that when we are parents, for better or for worse, we affect our children forever. “You can have the fantasy that you are different from your parents, that you can escape from that,” warns the director. “But the time will come when you will realize that you look like them.”
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