“The extreme right has no sense of humor, they are always angry”

Manuel Gómez Pereira and Joaquín Oristrell triumphed in the nineties with comedies such as Love seriously harms health a film halfway between late Francoism and democracy, a true metaphor for the transition. Now they return with Dinnernumber one at the box office and a very free adaptation of the work The generals’ dinnerby José Luis Alonso de Santos, about the beginnings of the Franco regime. Mario Casas is the confused soldier who is tasked with organizing a dinner for Franco and his staff to celebrate the fall of Madrid. A vaudeville set in a Palace hotel run by a rogue Alberto San Juan in which Asier Etxeandía bursts in wearing a black shirt and shooting. A spicy and fresh comedy, not to mention necessary.

Active spectator

“Comedy and horror are underrated,
and they are the ones with which the public is most disinhibited”

Could it be said that this film wants to show that Francoism seriously harms health?

Joaquin Oristrell: Not everyone sees it that way! The latest statistics say that 21% of Spaniards consider that Franco’s regime was good. We are already veterans, we experienced something of Franco’s regime, and we have seen how, over the years, the story has changed. This must be framed in a global campaign against democracy. Let’s no longer talk about left and right, that is already very old, but about autocracy against democracy. There are many young people who distrust democracy and believe that it would be better if there was a leader to show the way forward.

Manuel Gómez Pereira: Yesterday I saw a report in La Sexta about the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death – our film is a humble contribution to that anniversary. The most curious thing is what the reporter ended up concluding: Franco is fashionable.

If Franco is in fashion, Dinner is a pretty timely film, isn’t it?

MGP: I think it can even be didactic. Humor, without trivializing it, is a good way to bring, especially the youngest, closer to that time that is so far away from them. It is a good defense and attack weapon.

JO: This project began to take shape eight years ago, and we, Yolanda García Serrano and myself, joined three years ago to write the script based on the work, which was more traditional and sainetada. Thus we realized that it was increasingly urgent to return to the Franco regime, even if it was with a lighter and more comical tone, and that we obscured it.

Indeed, it is a comedy with fear, executions and crazed Falangists…

JO: Totally. It must be said that the extreme right has no sense of humor. They are always angry. There was no humor in Hitler or Mussolini, that’s why great masters have made humor about those people.

Comedy, like horror, is an escape valve for an audience fleeing realities such as the return of fascism.

JO: You have compared comedy with horror, which are two genres that tend to be a little underrated and are the ones with which the public becomes most disinhibited and stops being passive. And I also believe that, in Spain, to talk about important things, the best cinema that has been made has to do with comedy: that of Berlanga, the one that Ferreri made here, the first ones by Almodóvar… I don’t think that a better film has been made in the world about the death penalty than The executioner. Our Mario Casas has something of Nino Manfredi from The executionerthe poor man who finds himself faced with a situation he does not know how to handle.

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Casas’ character represses his sexuality, and the cliché says that this produces monsters. But he’s a good guy…

MGP: Perhaps you have never encountered another man who awakens those feelings in you. He finds himself in a situation in which, little by little, certain acquired ideas that he had never questioned are being dismantled. It’s a bit like when the war caught many Republicans on the national side. They had to adapt.

Geographic and survival issue.

JO: In the buddy movies whether in classic comedies like The strange couple or in thrillers with alpha males like lethal weapon There is always a situation that indicates that, in reality, they are love stories between two traveling companions who at first can’t stand each other, because they are very antagonistic, and in the end they end up together because they complement each other. For us, the topic of repressed sexuality is something that we have always liked. Our comedies have always been quite sexualized, with themes such as adultery in pink sauce or feminism in All men are equal .

“Our comedies have always been quite sexualized, with themes such as adultery in ‘Salsa rosa’ or feminism in ‘All men are equal’”

Now Spanish comedy is more familiar.

J:O.: The positive part is that they take children to the movies. I hope they get into the habit. Although I think he lacks ambition.

Speaking of Salsa rosa, and many other films that you made together, how do you explain the sad ending that Verónica Forqué had?

JO: She was a very good friend of ours. I even went to yoga with her. She experienced a very great depression, with a somewhat traumatic separation, the deaths of her mother, her father and her brother, and what finished it off for me was the television program. There it exploded. They didn’t realize that what they were doing was a misuse of their image, and all for the audiences. It was very ugly.