29/06/2023 - Álex Lora achieves an interesting debut feature with a certain truth about the emptiness and precariousness of relationships

In bed, after sex, an attractive young woman takes photos on her mobile phone of one of her lovers to upload them onto social media. So begins Unicorns [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the first feature film by the Catalan filmmaker Àlex Lora, co-written with Pilar Palomero, María Mínguez and Marta Vivet, starring Greta Fernández, and presented in the Official Section of the latest Malaga Film Festival and at the D’A Film Fest in Barcelona, as part of the Special screenings. It has now been released in Spain (30 June) by Filmax.

The attractive young woman is Isa (a terrific Greta Fernández), an aspiring photographer who, while trying to finish her thesis, works as a content creator at an advertising agency. Seemingly very sure of herself and her ideas, feminist and polyamorous, her doubts and contradictions start to come to the surface when her boyfriend suggests they be monogamous and she is unsure if she wants to change her life. With the relationship she thought was so special broken, Isa seems to enter a loop of endless parties, lots of posing and drugs, fleeting relationships and decisions that are never made. This is the story the film tells, and its beginning says a lot about what is to come. Appearances, insecurities camouflaged as convictions, emptiness, unfulfilled desires, frustrations, the fear of commitment, the precariousness of human and present bonds (or rather, of some of them), twisted family relationships, the burden of legacy, the presence of social media in today's world, the loss of intimacy, trying to escape from the life we have and don't want.

At the heart of it, Unicorns is a film about relationships, about the need to love and be loved, about the difficulty of it all. The way these relationships are approached is interesting, from their contradictory natures and grey areas, showing what they claim to be and what they hide, far from moral judgements. They are complex, how exciting they can be is conveyed as well as their superficiality, emotion and resignation, a certain attraction and at the same time a touch of sadness. Greta Fernández's performance is also credible (especially in her mother-daughter relationship with Nora Navas), her glances, gestures and expressions often saying much more than her words and actions. And there are moments with a certain strength and tension.

The film's great weakness is precisely one of its key themes: superficiality. The aesthetics and the production have a certain charm, but there are moments when what they really hide is nothingness. Sequences that end up losing all interest and become very modern video clips with little to say. There are situations that try to be groundbreaking or surprising (or I don't really know what they are trying to be) and end up being implausible and artificial (the performances of some of the characters don't make things any easier either). It is interesting how some of the emotions of the protagonist are expressed in a veiled manner, but in other cases it is simply pretence.

Unicorns is an unusual film, which does not achieve everything it sets out to achieve, but with interesting successes. The best part about it is the risk taken in naturally approaching the protagonist's intimacy, with no intention of judgement or any message. In doing so, it manages to be an evocative film with a certain truth.

Unicorns is a production from the companies Inicia Films, Jaibo Films and TV3, with Filmax managing international sales.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)