25/10/2024 - Producer-turned-director Elena Manrique crafts a delightfully acerbic tale that rails against well-to-do social classes that are hypocritical and snobbish in equal measure

World-premiered in the Discovery section of the most recent Toronto International Film Festival, The Party’s Over [+see also:
trailer
interview: Elena Manrique
film profile] is the feature debut (following various experimental shorts and medium-length films) by a filmmaker with plenty of experience in the minefield known as production: Elena Manrique, the woman behind hits such as Pan’s Labyrinth [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], The Orphanage [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Cell 211 [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Daniel Monzón
film profile]. Her movie is competing for the Golden Spike in the official section of the 69th Seminci at Valladolid.

The storyline unfolds in Andalusia. There, an undocumented African immigrant who has the police on his tail manages to sneak into a majestic manor house with an enormous garden where evening parties continue until the sun comes up. From the vantage point of his shed, his astonished eyes observe the dynamics at play between the owner of the premises and her self-sacrificing maid, but one day, he is discovered by the former and, shortly afterwards, by the latter. However, contrary to what he expects, neither woman tells the other: they will both keep the secret that there is a third passenger on board this mother ship adrift in time and space…

The plot – written by Manrique herself, who previously worked on another film about immigrants, Jumping the Fence [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Benito Zambrano, whose protagonist, Edith Martínez-Val, also performs here – serves as the backbone around which the director constructs a witty social satire that, while raising a smile, also rails against those braggard elites who cling like barnacles to their antiquated privileges. At the same time, it portrays working-class people who survive thanks to lies and subterfuge as they carry the age-old yoke of their fickle, quintessentially Spanish mistresses.

In this labyrinthine narrative framework, the figure of the immigrant becomes the external point of view – like that of the viewer – that is stunned to see how, in a supposedly modern society, models of slavery are being perpetuated on the sly. But also – as happened in other cinematic classics, from Theorem to Alien – this unexpected guest will completely dismantle everything that has been established up to that point in this hypocritical microcosm.

Propped up by the work of Sonia Barba (a real revelation in the domain of film, having previously acted in theatre and performance works), who plays Carmina, a domineering, manipulative, selfish and hedonistic figure firmly rooted in a splendorous past from which she cannot, and does not want to, separate, The Party’s Over stands as a fresh-feeling film with a mischievousness that is more than welcome in modern cinema. It’s a movie that does not take itself too seriously, dares to take up the baton of sarcasm from maestro Luis García Berlanga (who lashed out at the aristocracy in unforgettable titles such as La escopeta nacional) and, contrary to what its title might assert, invites the audience to enjoy the party to the fullest.

The Party’s Over is a Spanish-Belgian co-production by La Claqueta, Perdición Films and Menuetto Films. Its international sales are overseen by Goodfellas.

(Translated from Spanish)