It is necessary to celebrate the success of the film Casa en flames because it is the optimal adaptation of Hollywood's imaginary and cinematic tics to the universe of Catalan costumbrismo. Dani de la Orden's film is a movie chiseled from clichés, with attractive but dramatically flat characters, and with a protocolary final trick that releases tensions (through a much-used fiery metaphor) alla maniera of the Yankees. But all that cinematic tradition is perfectly acted, well written, and narrated with temper. If Casa en flames were an American product ---directed by Woody Allen or, in a more kitsch-violent version, by Emerald Fennell--- we all would have happily gone to the cinema and swallowed its studiedly unexpected twists, social clichés, and so on without further problems; and if the mother so well sculpted by Emma Vilarasau had been played by Meryl Streep, everyone would demand the bald statuette for the perfect actress.
With all this, I mean that it is fantastic news that Dani de la Orden and company have given birth to a very competent commercial film and that there are hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens who pay for a ticket to see it as soon as possible. As Joel Joan very well said, our cinema excels in products capable of winning the most prestigious awards in European cinema (often for films that, it must be said, are a fucking bore and follow exactly the same parameters as Hollywood, such as Alcarràs); but it is very difficult for us to admit that an industry like cinema needs a correct pièce bien fait for the public to want to shell out the price of a ticket and recognize themselves in a certain imaginary, however artificial it may be. At home, we are always in favor of monetary triumph and creators making a lot of money with their productions, especially because the success of Casa en flames will allow De la Orden to make more years of cinema.
The culture vultures ---like yours truly, I clarify--- will leave Casa en flames inflating their ego through an art as easy as revealing its tricks. The filmmaker does not hide them from us at any moment: the initial cadaverous shock effect, the figure of a mother too Machiavellian and self-tortured to be believable, a group of relatives woven with textbook emotional flaws, that very Spanish thing of placing cynicism within a prototypical Catalan family from the Eixample (with the consequent resentful prejudice about those people of the tribe who had enough money to have a little house in Cadaqués) and a lieto fine set to the most socio-convergent music that Catalonia has ever produced. All this is very good and will serve to broaden the self-complacency of people who masturbate with quietist Soviet films and post-Godardian films. But the fundamental issue, I insist, is that there is a film in Catalan that more than meets globalizing standards.
Catalan cinema must be proud of the visual and conceptual marvels of our genius Albert Serra, of course; but it also needs storytellers who entertain us (we have perpetrated thousands of naps by watching American films much more mediocre than Casa en flames) and products that we enjoy watching on a random Friday when we leave work exhausted and want a narrative that doesn't impose too much neuronal intensity. If the price for all this is that the culture vultures of the tribe (and the inhabitants of the Eixample) leave the cinema entertained and with enough strength to write one of our cultural criticism articles ---equally predictable, by the way--- then it will have been worth it. Cinema is an industry and must make money, and it is magnificent news that Casa en flames generates tickets and that its staff and actors have enough visibility for commercial success to give them more work. That way everyone will win.
For those who want to play the connoisseur, this week ends the cycle Agnès Varda Imprescindible at the Filmoteca. There, us know-it-all snobs can calmly go to see high-brow cinema, believing ourselves all experts and pretentiously avant-garde, and this will allow us to return home through the Raval commenting on how free and radical the lady in question was. We will ultimately be as pathetic as the oversized characters in Casa en flames. I hope that the box office of this film remains full of clings, that its filmmaker can soon mortgage herself buying a little house (with fire extinguishers!) on the Costa Brava and that she travels to enough festivals so that her children have quality traumas due to paternal absence. We must once again value the art of making money, because this Catalan identity thing is becoming frighteningly impoverished.