Reviews

This is an excellent series, without a doubt the best Catalan show I've watched in recent years.

The plot is about a young couple with two kids who move to a neighbourhood in the hills behind Barcelona, to be closer to nature. They are a middle-class, a bit hipster couple with good jobs, who have exchanged roles after four years: he is a full time homemaker while she works full time as a seller of expensive, "fairtrade" rugs made in Morrocco. The series revolves around their experience trying to balance work with raising their children and the contradictions they live in.

It seemed to me a realistic portrait of how parenthood may be in our present time, with all the insecurities of our society (individualist well-being, globalisation, fakeness, the pervasive presence of screens and social networks, etc.) naturally reflected throughout the eight episodes.

The script never stops being good, until the end; it's often funny, even though it's generally a drama with some depth.

Happy to see Catalan culture is still alive and able to create fiction of quality and relevance.

This is the first Wes Anderson movie I've ever watched, and given it's supposed to be its masterpiece, I think it will be the last one. In fact, I could just stand to watch half of it, and decided it wasn't worth wasting the rest of my time so just read the rest of the argument.

When I watch a movie, I wanted to have some emotion behind it, and to teach me something. The reason why didn't like this movie (and probably, Wes Anderson's particular style) is that I felt there was nothing in it besides its visuals, this perfectionist shots and stiff way of acting. All the scenes look alike, and all actors act in the same way: stiff, inexpressive. It didn't seem funny to me at any point.

Even if the plot made up for it (which is based on a book by Zweig), the execution of the film just spoils it. This very plastic, very materialistic outlook of the movie, with an obsession with this beautiful visuals, just seems a way for the author to conceal the shallowness of the movie.