To enclose the essence of two books, each with hundreds of pages, in a single film of just under two hours is certainly not an easy task and also this new Netflix original production (you can read here the films coming out on Netflix in October 2021 from Army of thieves to The Guilty) has to deal with the difficulties of its adaptation for the cinematic media.
We were songs is taken from the diptych of novels by Elísabet Benavent and how the original work tries to fit into the crowded stream of romantic stories by proposing a fresh and modern approach, which breaks with traditions and offers the portrait of vital and independent women, without the shadow of classic love risking to compromise their ambitions.
Benavent herself has declared herself very satisfied with the work done by director Juana Macías, in your opinion able to “respect the spirit of the characters and make them shine, giving life to an incredible result“But we weren’t as enthusiastic.
We were songs: modern loves
The story mainly follows the figure of Maca, a 30-year-old who lives in Madrid and works as the manager of a well-known influencer.
A job that does not fully satisfy her, also due to the whims of her client, and that goes hand in hand with her sentimental situation: in fact, Maca has not yet found the right man for her.
Or rather, perhaps she had succeeded in the past, but the relationship with ex-boyfriend Leo had ended in the worst way and Maca was inevitably burned by it. When the man suddenly reappears and discovers that he is now engaged to an acquaintance of his, Maca begins to relive the emotions of the past and between the two, after the initial disagreements, the passion that he was ends up rekindling, with completely unpredictable consequences. Meanwhile, Maca’s best friends, Jimena and Adriana, are also struggling with more or less daring romantic situations.
How times change
The main objective is to interact with the public, especially female, to try to create a sort of empathic bond that binds to the story of the protagonist. And in this We were teasing no limits, between attempts to break the fourth wall, multiplications and flashbacks that intersect in the present film.
A continuous, nagging, search for variety that is used to cover the partial conceptual flaws of an operation that reveals itself clearly aligned in its positions as a contemporary girl power, complete with epilogue that goes to more radical choices, shareable or not.
Love in its most obvious conception is thus ferried on different paths and the trinity of women at the center of the story tries to exemplify its various nuances, in a journey between irony and romanticism that never reaches the emotional pathos necessary for the total involvement of the viewer.We were songs ends up relying on the performances of his actresses, in a heterogeneous cast led by the unleashed María Valverde, a real strength of the film.