What are we hiding in our cell phones? Perfeito Desconhecidos (2017) is a Spanish film directed by Iglesia in which these issues are explored.
The film in question is an adaptation of his Italian playboy Perfetti Sconosciuti (2016) by filmmaker Paolo Genovese. Both versions show us the same thing: a group of friends who meet for a good dinner, but everything gets complicated when, because of a joke, their deepest interests emerge.
- Perfect Strangers is a movie that? Between the filmography of the director.
- Born in Bilbao.
- Spain.
- After the debuts of O Bar (2017) and titles such as Balada do Amor e do Odio (2010).
- Minha Minha Noite (2015).
- A Comunidade (2000) or O Dia da Besta (1995).
- It seems strange to think of a comedy that is a more or less realistic criticism of our current society.
From the Church we have become accustomed to a different, darker, cruder and much more surreal humor, as well as normal situations that end up being taken to the extreme, in the most unreasonable, to which we could never imagine.
Maybe that’s why Perfect Strangers didn’t seem to agree. The proposal is interesting, there is no doubt, but this dinner lacked a more energetic dish and perhaps there were some meames left, many ingredients for a very short and very predictable dinner of the starting hand, something that suffocates your throat.
Despite this, there is no doubt about the ambition of the proposal, the discourse and reflection offered by the film, which in the form of a comedy, in a very small space, does not take much more than a mobile phone for tragedy to begin with.
A comedy of our time, of our time, that will make us smile, but also reflect How do we use new technologies?Do we really know the people we’re interested in? Perfect Strangers shows it to us through various tragicomic situations.
Social media is part of our lives; our smartphone is almost an extension of our arm and, at the same time, a kind of diary, we are always with it, we save images, conversations and a multitude of information that we want to share partially or that we do not want to share directly.
For example, what we do when we surf the Internet is ours and part of our privacy, we are never alone, in solitude, the network is with us and only he knows some of our deepest thoughts.
On social media we expose the face that we want to show the world, the most beautiful photos of our trip or the delicious dinner that we will taste. But what’s really true about this? We live in a world where we constantly submit to external and external judgments. Therefore, we try to take care of our image, which we want to project in the world, although sometimes it does not correspond to reality.
In a way we can say that we live in a constant lie, a false reality that is nothing more than a distortion of ourselves, many times we do not believe in what we publish ourselves, we agree with the initiatives simply by what we are going to say?and we share news that we don’t even read, but whose title has caught our attention.
All of this is explored in Perfect Unknowns, a comedy that aims to reveal the intimacy of a group of friends, people who supposedly know each other very well.
The situations presented by De la Iglesia are so absurd that they lose credibility, I am not talking about absurdities because they are impossible, but because, on the contrary, it is hard to believe that a group of people with so many secrets may be tempted to expose themselves in this way.
It is that today is the last thing we want: to expose ourselves, to show our intimate and precious truth, but perhaps we can think that it is precisely this slavery that leads the protagonists of the film to get carried away by the situation.
That’s what happens with the characters. They break free from their masks and reveal their darkest secrets, even at the risk of losing everything they have. Comedy starts exactly from tragedy, from misery. We laugh when we see the succession of victims that occur in the plot. the end of friendship and affection between all of them.
Much of our privacy is stored on a small device called a smartphone, a device that, on the other hand, always accompanies us, being sensitive to a certain exposure, why don’t we leave it at a table all night in front of the people we care about?
While one might think that there is nothing to fear, the truth is that one secret or another will be revealed, even if it is insignificant, intimacy is no longer ours, we keep it and make it available to all, no matter how much we have it. passwords that protect us.
Have we lost privacy? Perhaps we show a false appearance, we project an image of ourselves away from reality, but the truth is that in some parts there is no longer intimacy.
We live so exposed that we want to preserve these little pieces that we consider ours, these little secrets, and leave them inside our smartphones. Perfect Strangers perfectly portrays addiction and fear in our own image, afraid it will be our true?Is it revealed.
Some characters are more reluctant than others to participate, but the truth is that the pressure of the group, especially the pressure exerted by their partners, leads them to finally allow the display of their most intimate sides.
In the case of two characters, we see that fear becomes greater than the game itself and leads us to a tremendously fun situation. Fearing to be discovered by his partner, Antonio proposes to Pepe to change his cell phone. What he doesn’t know is that Pepe also protects himself from a secret he never revealed to any of his friends.
This privacy protection leads both not to want to reveal that they have changed mobile phones, even when the situation reaches a time of extreme tension, they don’t even want to reveal knowing that maybe, if they explained the situation, everything could be fine. Both are attached to their secrets, to their small spaces of intimacy that do not want to be invaded.
If there’s one thing we don’t support today is boredom, so we see Eve’s character who, from the beginning, wants something to happen that night, something good or bad, but something that makes them break the routine, monotony. .
The whole film is linked to a strange phenomenon that accompanies this series of victims: the red moon or the blood moon. The moon has been regarded, since ancient times, as the conductor of the world, especially of liquid elements. The tides change with the moon, and our brains are wet too. For this reason, some authors, such as Aristotle, have seen some relationship between the phases of the moon and human behavior itself.
So we have a powerful moon that even the best smartphones on the market can fight against, a moon that will make the situation violent and irrational to the characters.
Touching madness, but also laughter, brings us the possible consequences of the world in which we live, offers a reflection on hypocrisy, lies and false appearances Do we really know the people we are interested in?Or do we just know the image they want to show us, do we apply the social media lie in our day-to-day life?
TheX of the Church brings us a comedy with a lot of remake and little ‘lex’ that will certainly offer us a pleasant yet thoughtful moment.
“Maybe I’ve never met you. -Perfect unknowns-“