‘Mala persona’: the uneven grace of the mean Spaniard in a black and white comedy | Culture

Being a good person is out of fashion… if it ever was, which is highly doubtful. Dark angels, on the other hand, have always been the best sellers of social junk. Also in the cinema, where evil often reigns: on the screen and in memory. We are such dogs.

That is why a comedy about the confrontation between one possibility and another, but focused on the same individual, has so many possibilities. And, mind you, so many dangers. Bad person, The excellent idea of ​​the script by Diego San José, later developed in the script by Santos Mercero and Daniel Padró, and put into images by Fernando García-Ruiz, bears witness to this. A film with popular ambitions, reaching everyone through situations and dialogues with the power of identification in the spectator. That dares to deal with blackness, but that does not want to hurt or be cruel. A black comedy that retreats towards whiteness. A black and white comedy, not grey. And, perhaps because of all this, unequal. It seems inevitable. Either you go all in, or you don’t go at all. And they have gone with the handbrake on. Who knows, it may be the perfect recipe for the people. That has been the case for a good part of the highest grossing comedies in the history of our cinema.

Once upon a time there was a guy who was so nice and good that he was almost stupid. In this way, almost in the form of a tale of joy, the initial part of Bad person. 25 minutes of kindness from a forty-something from the neighbourhood; some praiseworthy, others to show him that he crosses the red line of stupidity. And also, played by an actor who, at least until now, seemed to feel very comfortable in the register of the Spanish boor: moderately loud, shameless, a know-it-all without knowing anything and smart to the point of success. Arturo Valls has always nailed that register, and now he has to deal with a merciful tending to sissy. He also consumes it, because he does not go too far or too short. He prefers moderation to histrionics. And he comes out well alive.

But the big twist comes: a brain tumor is going to end the life of this good man in just a few months. And he is so selfless that, so that his family and friends do not feel bad about his death and do not miss him, he decides to become the evil beast that, with various difficulties, he plays in the second part of the film. It is then that the best situations and the cruelest laughs should come. But they do not. And, together with an incomprehensible work of lackluster photography and ugly backlighting, in the structure, in the plot scheme, everything can be seen coming from miles away. There are good moments of everyday life, of wise popular comedy from the sixties, even direction by García-Ruiz (the off-screen in the traffic discussion), which make one think of a warm comedy from the classic factory of Pedro Masó, written by Vicente Coello and Antonio Vich, and performed by Tony Leblanc.

However, as also happened to Derailed (2021), García-Ruiz’s previous work, there are a couple of moments of real quagmire, in which the inside joke (at which the most unpresentable characters laugh) seems to merge with wanting to be funny outside, towards the audience, and it is a disaster: the times of laughter with the bullfighting firefighter and the like are over.

The moral, however, leaves things where they should be (you have to be good to those who deserve it, and evil to those who do too), Malena Alterio and Julián Villagrán support Valls’ leading role, and there are a couple of comic revelations that show that there is no small role: Betsy Túrnez and Dafnis Balduz excel as the doctor and the bank employee. The everlasting grace of the mean Spaniard.

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