Movie Buff #3: Yo También
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Yo,
También, a film by Alvaro Pastor and Antonio
Naharro
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What
a movie! What a moving movie! It deals with the story of a
friendship verging on love between a man with Down's syndrome (Pablo
Pineda) and a woman with bleached hair (Lola Dueñas). It's
brilliant, subtle, moving, funny. Characters are great, and way
beyond clichés. The film avoids no touchy question, especially
regarding disabled persons' sexuality, but deals with it with
immense decency and tenderness. Yo, También is never
creepy, always surprising. Daniel is an extraordinarily complex
character, who is educated and blessed with an irresistible sense of
humour and self-derision. But he faces all the rejections his
physionomy inspires, while inside he's so "normal", so like
anyone else. He has needs, desires, aspirations, fantasies.
But he's more than average, that's for sure. He's sensitive,
intelligent, childish, manly, outspoken and respectful.
As
for Laura, she may suffer from no disability, but she's an outcast,
maybe more than Daniel can be. She sleeps with every man she
meets, desperately. She carries her sadness along
with her despite her beautiful smile. She's got no relatives, or
so she says. But the script makes us sense that she escaped some
sort of violence when she left her father and brothers to live
in Sevilla at a very young age. We guess she was the victim of incest
on the part of the father. Nothing is ever clearly mentioned, but
everything is crystal clear.
This is
the force of the movie: respect, decency, subtlety. Things are
unveiled little by little, as if not to break Laura altogether. And
thanks to her extraordinary friendship with Daniel, we watch her
inner strength grow, her self-respect appear.
Yo,
También is a beautiful movie which adresses taboo issues such as
the possibility of sexuality and love for the persons
suffering from Down's syndrom and how society resents it, even the
most comprehensive circles within it. Furthermore, we are
particularly sympathethic to Daniel's quest for normality. For
he was made normal by the constant stimulation of his mother. His
fate reminds us of the Valladolid controversy, over the existence of
a soul within Indians. We have to bear in mind that what Daniel faces
is nothing less than xenophobia. The fear of the stranger, of
the strange man, of the freak. His brother gives one perfect
example of this: "No woman with 46 chromosomes will love you.
Yet, these are the women you're always attracted to. Why don't you go
to women like you?"
That's
the point, no one is like him. He expresses it to his mother: "Why
did you make me normal, why wouldn't you leave me as I was?"
Because
maybe he would have been happy like that, like the "imbécile
heureux", the happy fool who as no idea of how harsh his
condition is and who can find love among the likes of him.
Daniel
is in a sort of limbo. Trapped between intelligence, insight and
physical appearence. But what is great about the film is that we
sense that everything is possible for him. We don't want him to give
up his search for true love. And the script seems to go this way...
But
nothing is sure, it's up to Daniel now...
