From ‘Family Tour’ and through ‘What did we do wrong?’, Liliana Torres has turned her fiction into a territory to question her place in the world. ‘Mammifera’ follows this path from the question that Lola, a woman around 40 and with a stable partner, asks herself when she realizes that she is almost the only one in her environment who does not want to be a mother: “Why? I don’t feel like it?” We accompany the protagonist in her process of reaffirming her will in the face of an unplanned pregnancy and despite social pressure.
Torres strips a subject still full of taboos of tremendousness without overlooking the extent to which any experience of this nature stirs up the inside. The director refines the profile of some very recognizable characters in a dramatic comedy that also captures the extent to which the social context conditions us. And she vindicates the protagonist’s option not as an antagonism to the motherhood of her friends but as an option as another of the female experience. A message reinforced by the presence of the as always splendid Maria Rodríguez Soto, embodying a variant of her most awarded role, that of ‘Els dies que vindran’ (2019).
To finally break the ice of the conversation about non-motherhood.
The best: the introduction of ‘collage’ animations to capture Lola’s fears.
Worst: that is considered a niche film.
Data sheet
Address: Liliana Torres Distribution: Maria Rodríguez Soto, Enric Auquer, Ruth Llopis, Anna Alarcón, Mireia Aixalà Country: Spain Year: 2024 Release date: 4-26-2024 Gender: Drama Script: Liliana Torres Duration: 95 min.
Synopsis: Lola enjoys a happy life with her partner, Bruno, until an unexpected pregnancy revolutionizes all her plans. Although Lola has always been clear that being her mother is not for her, she now feels questioned by her social expectations and faces her internal fears. During the three days they have to wait for her appointment at the clinic, Lola approaches her friends and her family with the intention of reaffirming her decision. Bruno had never imagined himself as a father either. Until now.
Eulàlia Iglesias Huix is a journalist and critic specialized in film and audiovisuals. Nothing in cinema is foreign to her, although among her specialties and interests are auteur cinema, new trends in contemporary cinema, classic Hollywood cinema, woman’s film and other forms of women’s cinema, new television fiction or the video clips.
PhD in the Anthropology and Communication program from the Rovira i Virgili University (Tarragona), she teaches the subjects of Audiovisual History, and Theory and Analysis of Film and Television within the Audiovisual Communication degree there. A member of the editorial board of Caimán-Cuadernos de cine, she regularly collaborates in the newspaper Ara, Rockdelux, Sensacine and Entreacte, among other publications.
He worked in the editorial office of Fotogramas from 2003 to 2005, and rejoined the magazine’s staff of collaborators in 2018. He has also published chapters in collective books on filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Muriel Box, Dorothy Arzner, Jacques Becker, M. Night Shyamalan, Bong Joon-ho, Joseph Losey, Francis Ford Coppola, Max Ophüls, Paul Schrader, Barber Schroeder, Hong Sang-soo, Claude Chabrol, Georges Franju and Larry Clark, among others. He is part of the Catalan Association of Cinema Criticism and Writing (ACCEC), the Fipresci of Catalonia, and was a member of its board of directors from 2014 to 2017. Member of the programming committee of Seminci, Valladolid International Film Week and of the of the D’A – Barcelona International Cinema D’Autor Festival, he regularly attends festivals such as Sitges, Locarno and Cannes, with which he maintains one of his longest-lasting love-hate relationships. In addition, he has been a jury member at the prestigious San Sebastián Film Festival.
