El consumidor

This short film closed a trilogy of surrealist language and social criticism.

The character is submerged in a sea of irresistible anxieties that leads him to buy more and more new consumer products.

PRESS
Mundo diario. Film catalán en Varsovia. Xavier -Daniel. 21 junio 1978

---

THE CONSUMER

A series of dramatized situations denounce those generic concepts that make up this “consumer society”: the aggressive offer of new products (electronic, electromechanical, electromagnetic, … without which we will feel unhappy, and yet their accumulated possession can align us, ….. The characters convey archetypal “concepts”, their performance has a certain air of mime. The context/decor reinforces by its appropriateness and simplicity that intentional embodiment of those “concepts”: a “600”, turmix, telephones….

A series of impersonalized hands “offer” first, and then oblige.

The film denotes a very good level of production, perhaps an unaccustomed level in the world of short films in these lands. The filmmaking and acting is also very commendable. In short, it is one of the most interesting short films in Spanish production.

And yet, the audience (perhaps logically?) is first uncomfortable, then annoyed and finally starts a timid protest.

THE CONSUMER is a suicidal film. Its production claims the diffusion within the commercial circuits, and in most theaters its exhibition will prologue or epilogue to the tiresome series of advertising “spots”. It is not an incongruity, if anything it will be a circumstance difficult to repeat, because the exhibitors will reject the film. It is that of the stones and one’s own roof.

THE CONSUMER starts from the distanced proposal, slightly parodic, but close enough to everyday reality to disturb the viewer. It does not reproduce the structure of the “spot” but it does reproduce the context in which it is inserted. It is an ironic representation.

MARTI ROM.Cinema 2001. No.2. Madrid. 11/1983

---