Oviedo Express, de Gonzalo Suárez: el género degenerado (una vez más).

Abstract

As well as providing a highly representative look at the cinematographic career of its director, the film Oviedo Express is a work that forms an integral part of a contemporary artistic output characterised by identities in transit, a continuous state of flux, and intertextuality, adding multiple layers of meaning beyond the obvious connection that it offers between theatre and cinema. Its frames thus draw a connection between classic and post-classic Hollywood films and the literature of Zweig and vaudeville, and between Clarín’s La Regenta and Shakespeare’s Hamlet or the theatre of the absurd. What Suárez proposes, therefore, is an atypical, unclassifiable filmic essay that is free of restrictions and prejudiced views and steers clear of melodrama. It is a type of Regenta transported, through his cinema, to another place, to the 21st century. It also ponders the extent to which performance (both in the entertainment world and also in politics and even personal relationships) has taken the place of reality.