Inasmuch as Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Goodbye South Goodbye, Nagisa Oshima’s Cruel Story of Youth, and Theo Angelopoulos’ The Beekeeper capture the rootlessness of a morally stunted, lost generation that has come of age at a time of profound political and cultural transformation, the reckless, thrill-seeking, young anti-heroes of Carlos Saura’s Deprisa, Deprisa also indirectly bear the scars of a life lived in the periphery – paradoxically insulated from the tyranny of institutional rule, but also divorced from the inured resilience engendered by its imposed sense of order. The film opens to the metaphoric image of imposed separation: the perpetration of a car theft by a seemingly experienced hotwirer Meca (Jesús Arias) and designated lookout Pablo (José Antonio Valdelomar) as the two, caught in the act by the owner, roll up the windows and lock the doors to prevent intrusion. Helplessly trapped inside the troublesome vehicle by a mob that has now closed in around them, the pair forces a clear path through the crowd by brandishing a gun, before inevitably making their escape into the street. But the stolen car only proves to be the first step in a more elaborate scheme. Spotting an attractive waitress named Ángela (Berta Socuéllamos) at a local cafeteria, Pablo is immediately captivated by the receptive (and equally restless) young woman, who soon becomes his lover and subsequently, inducts her into their gang after an afternoon of makeshift target shooting (and a reluctant agreement from a third accomplice, Sebas (José María Hervás Roldán) who questions a woman’s capacity for ruthlessness). Alternately spending their idle time at discotheques and video arcades, acting on their impulsive whims, and succumbing to the intoxication of drug use, the emboldened quartet begins to stage an ever-escalating series of hold-ups throughout the city, with increasingly lucrative, and inevitably tragic results. Revisiting the recurring themes of machismo and displaced aggression that pervade Saura’s oeuvre (and first introduced in his groundbreaking allegory, The Hunt) into a provocative exposition on the legacy of disenfranchisement, violence, and arrested development (a theme that also pervades Cría Cuevos) in contemporary, post-Franco Spain, Deprisa, Deprisa is also a raw and sobering portrait of a generation at an existential crossroads, struggling to find mooring and direction in an uncertain climate of transformative, social revolution, as the nation emerged from the repression of fascism towards the liberalization of democracy. Inevitably, it is this dichotomy that is reflected in the recurring image of passing trains that bisect the horizon – a perennial view from the public housing suburb outside the city where Pablo and Ángela live – a visual bifurcation that illustrates, not only their socioeconomic marginality, but also exposes their irreparable moral fissure.
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