Hear
The promise (Spain/2022). Creator: Josep Cister Rubio. Cast: Manuel Regueiro, Eva Martín, Ana Garcés, Joaquín Climent, Arturo Sancho, Carmen Asecas, María Castro, Marga Martínez, Teresa Quintero. Available in: Max. Our opinion: good.
The promise is the name of a huge castle in the Los Pedroches valley. Its imposing silhouette crowns the property of the Marquises of Luján, landowners of the Córdoba region, in Spain. But “the promise” is also a silent pact between a daughter and a mother who run across the field escaping a guard of hooded men. The girl survives after handing over her little brother to the pursuers. The only thing he glimpses before jumping into a rocky river and losing himself in a future of survival is a signet ring on the evil man’s hand, the raised acronym of the room “The Promise.” All of this occurred towards the end of the 19th century, in a fateful year for Spain such as the ‘Disaster of 1898’ and the defeat of the Crown in the war with the United States, which led to the loss of a large part of its colonies. . The young King Alfonso
Around 1913, the surviving girl is Jana Expósito (Ana Garcés), a 20-year-old woman on her way to “The Promise” to fulfill her revenge. Awaiting her is the lavish wedding of the heir and a series of internal intrigues that settle the succession of the Marquisate of Luján and the love relationships that make up the heart of this historical novel.
The expectation of the creator, Josep Cister Rubio – a specialist in historical fiction since the monumental success of Acacias 38, a portrait of the urban bourgeoisie at the turn of the century -, focuses on reviving that spirit of the period soap opera, now in an enclave far from the city, capitalizing on all the social and political changes of the time: the imminence of the First War World Cup, the exploits of the suffragettes, the fascination with aviation, the social revolts and the preamble to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. And within “The Promise”, two spaces are in conflict: that of the lords, with their misfortunes of power and fortune, and that of the servants, with alliances and envies that define a state of situation always in tension.
The clear inspiration for Rubio and his team of screenwriters is the work of Julian Fellowes in Downton Abbey, using the same era and the family mansion as the setting for the action and intrigue. Already in Acacias 38 had gleaned clues from the literature of EM Forster, whose extraordinary The Howard Mansion It was perhaps the inspiration for that portrait of conflicting social classes in Edwardian England that Rubio turns into the Madrid of the 1900s. Both corridors of inspiration have Fellowes as a lighthouse, and here those references become evident, yes, with another aesthetic key. : Spanish narratives tend to strengthen the melodramatic tradition, proposing an emotional closeness rather than a reflective distance, and their intrigues are profuse, bizarre, marked by the accumulation of conflicts, coincidences and coups d’effect. In the same way, the tensions between the “above” and the “below”, which in English society expose the dilemmas of their foundation in the old castes, in Spain are more explicit in confrontations and crossed relationships, in a socioeconomic border at often blurred that contributes to the explosion of conflicts.
The promise fulfills each of these premises: relationships between rich and poor, police intrigue and investigation, changed identities, conflicts of inheritance and lineage, crimes and betrayals. He does it without fearing his popular roots, but without reaching the formal virtuosity that has highlighted the best melodramas, from Douglas Sirk to Almodóvar himself. Everything here is more modest, conditioned by some mediocre performances – especially those of the younger actors – and some weak characters, but with a consistent appeal in the future of a plot that does not seem to run out despite the multiple turns on its own axis. . They highlight the presence of Eva Martín as the new marchioness, an ambitious and ruthless villain; the cooks from the floor below, with regional accents and a certain charm in their domestic disputes: the excellent María Castro as the tormented housekeeper, and the patriarch made up of Manuel Regueiro, a man of his bearing and his time, corroded by his failures and their ghosts.
The promisewhich can now be seen on Max, was an unexpected success in Spain and has already aired for three seasons on RTVE, co-produced by Spanish Television, the Studio Canal label and Bambú Producciones, the powerhouse for several popular fictions such as Great Hotel, velvet and The cable girls. The series has all the virtues and shortcomings of a long-term narrative, the slow development of some conflicts, the dialogue with a world that changes and evolves, the exit and entry of characters that renew what seems exhausted, but also the eternal procrastination. of some resolutions, unnecessary entanglements and solved by resources deus ex machina, and some ups and downs in the rhythm. It is curious that at the beginning the story absorbs some of the police enigma in the investigation of a crime committed in the living room of the family home. There he picks up some intersection that Fellowes had also explored in his script for Gosford Park (2001), Robert Altman’s last film, imbued with its scriptwriter’s taste for those worlds of hypocrisy and silencing that lead to murder.
Josep Cister Rubio does not raise his ambitions too much, but rather keeps his universe controlled and gives Spanish fiction and its loyal viewers a captivating story to watch every day, like nightly reading of those old and beloved serial novels from the 19th century. . In those coordinates his spirit is defined.
