The Perfect Family
Arantxa Echevarría’s Spanish comedy proves to be more than just a funny film.
You might be forgiven for thinking that The Perfect Family is just another romcom like many before it. Indeed, it opens with a young Spanish man, Pablo, wondering how he can tell his parents, Lucía and Ernesto, about his fiancée, Sara, and their impending marriage. Because Sara’s family is the direct opposite to his own, he feels that she won't be accepted by her new in-laws. How many times have we seen that scenario played out in the movies? Well, this is not just a romantic comedy because it also goes much further in a serious way but without ditching the comic element.
Lucía and Ernesto are a well-off couple, classy, rich and sort of famous. Ernesto is a celebrated scientist leading what appears to be an envious life, but the marriage has atrophied and become a loveless relationship. When Pablo takes his parents to meet Sara’s family they have to drive through what Lucía thinks is a part of Madrid she has never ever seen before, common and downtrodden in a really rough way. Her worst fears are confirmed when she meets the new family of in-laws as they match their surroundings and seem to be completely out of her own class. Good heavens above, Amparo, Pablo's would-be mother-in-law, is nothing but a bus driver!
However, the film then goes off on a tangent when, just before the wedding, Lucía wakes up during a storm, only to fall over and be rescued by Miguel, Sara's father. There is an immediate attraction between them that cannot be explained or denied and which takes the plot in a completely new direction. So, what started out as an ordinary romcom about the problems of two young people from different classes, turns into a touching tale of love blossoming among the older generation.
The screenwriter Olatz Arrouo and director Arantxa Echevarría hit just the right notes throughout, producing a touching but still hilarious portrait of family life in all its different shades. Belén Rueda is delightful as the appalled Lucía whose class-riddled carapace eventually softens, and Jose Coronado as her husband Miguel is all too real as a man who no longer makes love to his wife. but just ignores his family and his home to the extent that he doesn't even know how to switch on the microwave. Gonzalo Ramos and Carolina Yuste play the young married couple with sweet conviction and the rest of the supporting cast rises to the occasion without overplaying the comedy element. There is a delightful cameo by Huichi Chiu as a disaffected maid who doesn't quite appreciate the way these mad families carry on.
Incidentally, although the cast mouth the Spanish dialogue, the dubbing into English is so expertly done that it is a long time before it is apparent that it is a dubbed version. It is so good that, because the voices fit the characters and the actors so well, I can only assume that the cast did their own English dubbing. A minor delight.
Original title: La familia perfecta.
MICHAEL DARVELL
Cast: Belén Rueda, Jose Coronado, Gonzalo de Castro, Pepa Aniorte, Carolina Yuste, Gonzalo Ramos, Lalo Tenorio, Belen Fabra, Huichi Chiu.
Dir Arantxa Echevarría, Pro Mercedes Gamero, Jaime Ortiz de Artinano and Gonzalo Salazar-Simpson, Screenplay Olatz Arroyo, Ph Pilar Sanchez Diaz, Art Dir Regina Acuna, Ed Renato Sanjuan, Music Pascal Gaigne and Federico Jusid, Costumes Eva Arretxe.
Atresmedia Cine/Lazona Producciones/The Snake Films-Universal Pictures/Netflix.
110 mins. 2021. Spain. UK and US Rel: 11 May 2022. Cert 15.