Runtime: 109 minutes
Directed by: Eloy de la Iglesia
Starring: Jose Luis Manzano, Jose Manuel Cervino, Luis Iriondo, Enrique San Francisco, Andrea Albani
From: Opalo Films
A surprising movie to see on Shudder, but still I am happy to see a director I only discovered a few months ago.‘tis true, from Letterboxd I first heard of Spanish director Eloy de la Iglesia. At the time none of his films were easily found to be streamed (at least legally) so it took Shudder adding 5 of his pictures for me to finally experience one of them. Note that only two of the five are horror in the strictest sense although I won’t complain about it… even if I’ve seen some not on this site squeal like pigs and whine about that detail. Anyhow, getting to see an out gay man/Socialist filmmaker from a country which was a dictatorship when he began his career—color me intrigued.
El Pico (the original title; pico has a double meaning: either heroin or a shortening of picoleto, slang for the Civil Guard national police force of Spain) is about a pair of teens who became buddies because they both ride the white horse… that is despite Paco being the son of a Civil Guard Captain and Urko being the son of a leftist politician. Yes, at times I was reminded of Traffic although another movie allowed for a natural comparison: Trainspotting. It’s a rather blunt look at the drug scene in the Basque region at the time. Unfortunately, de la Iglesia himself ended up having issues with drugs which is why a few years later he left the director’s chair for a long time but eventually he kicked the habit and returned before passing away in 2006… of natural causes. Speaking of kicking it, there’s a withdrawal scene which was just about as painful-looking as the one in Trainspotting, just in a different way. Hell, there’s even an infant and while his mother sadly shot up during pregnancy and the most shocking moment involves the baby… he thankfully doesn’t die. As the English title Overdose implies, yes there is an OD.
As I said this was a harsh look at that lifestyle. You see multiple people shoot up, male and female full frontal nudity presented matter-of-factly, murder, someone’s mother dying due to cancer… rather bleak, yes. At least there were a few moments where I could chuckle. Two scenes feature Spanish disco music (apparently, that trend did not die out there by 1983) and another one features people doing lines of coke in a room filled with posters of Marilyn Monroe, David Bowie and Laurel & Hardy. And the score is synth-based, which works for me… although it was curious that more than once, a jaunty tune is heard during scenes that are rather sobering.
Another thing I learned recently: this movie was part of a short-lived movement in Spain known as quinqui; it features gritty stories of the underclass, featuring nonprofessional actors. The two most famous examples are What Have I Done to Deserve This? & Deprisa, Deprisa. Sad to say the actor who played Paco (Jose Luis Manzano) actually died before the age of 30 due to a heroin OD. The movie’s not the easiest watch but personally it was a rewarding journey.
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