We are parents of our children and, when we reach an age, we are also parents of our parents. Three weeks after ‘Alcarràs’, which remains in second place at the box office, only surpassed by Marvel’s ‘Doctor Strange’, comes ‘Five Wolves’, another proof of the strength of the female gaze in our cinematography. The debut feature by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa (Barakaldo, 1978) explores in a moving and sensitive way topics such as motherhood, illness and the weight of family inheritance. The film swept the last Malaga Festival, where it won the Golden Biznaga for the best Spanish film, the Silver Biznaga for best script, the ex-aequo acting award for Laia Costa and Susi Sánchez and the Audience Award. Outside of the official honors list, he also won the Feroz Award from film informants.
Laia Costa plays a new mother, still sore from the stitches, who is overwhelmed by the challenges of caring for a newborn. your boy (Mikel Bustamante) He is a theater technician who goes on tour and leaves her alone with little Jone; That’s what it means to be autonomous. The protagonist makes the decision to leave Madrid and return to the beautiful coastal town of Bizkaia where she comes from. She doesn’t know that, in addition to changing diapers, she is going to have to take care of parents who are facing the disease.
“I have written and directed ‘Cinco lobitos’ thinking that we are children of a round trip,” says Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, who after the success of the film has filmed the romantic comedy ‘Eres tú’ for Netflix. «I was the mother of a child six years ago. My motherhood changed many things in my life, including the way I saw my parents. I had become a mother and they had become grandparents. More than an idyllic event, motherhood seemed to me like a meteorite that destroyed everything and caused family relationships to never be the same. My family had become another. One of those vital changes that cannot be reversed. Because when we are parents, we have the feeling of becoming adults.
invisible witness
One of the merits of ‘Five Little Wolves’ 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 do not usually express or verbalize their emotions, and that coldness is very good for a film that touches on many topics under its apparent lightness: the Spain of precariousness, palliative care, women’s renunciation of professional dreams due to motherhood, the machismo of previous generations…
“As a filmmaker, I like that magic by which the viewer becomes an invisible witness of other people’s lives,” explains this admirer of the films of Yasujiro Ozu and Hirokazu Kore-eda. «I wanted things to happen on an emotional level, even if they were disguised as everyday life. “We worked a lot with the actors to capture that discreetly and make the viewer feel inside that house, in a privileged place.”
It is surprising that a first-time director gets performances of such depth as those of Laia Costa, perfect as an overwhelmed mother, and the veterans Susi Sánchez (with a Basque accent) and Ramón Barea. Alauda Ruiz de Azúa does not judge his characters, but rather observes them with tenderness, without pointing out villains or victims. ‘Five Little Wolves’ shows that when we are parents, for better or worse, we emotionally mark 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 there will come a time when you will realize that you are just like them.”
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