The scene is tense, tender, electric. The girl is in the sea, the waves cover and uncover her nose, mouth, neck. He is watching, staring fixedly above the swell, which swings a wooden platform, where half a dozen boys about his age are holding on, struggling, trying to throw themselves into the water. They are neither very muscular nor do they stop being muscular, they are normal boys. The rumble of thrusts flies over the scene. The camera searches her several times, her gaze penetrating, observes skins that shed testosterone, observes gladiators in swimsuits. Everything is understood without the need for words or rictus. Mila is discovering sexual desire. He just discovered men. Mila likes men. She will like men.
In reality, we already know this because the film has begun with an adult Mila, who has just moved with her partner to what used to be her summer house, on that beach, in l'Empordà. She lives with Marcel, whom she desires in a non-linear, non-masculine way: at the beginning of the film, they are both about to go to sleep when she looks for him. They hug, kiss, undress. Shortly after, she says goodbye. Yes changes: no. He steps back, hesitates, something pierces his desire. Stop. Marcel doesn't understand anything.
The adult Mila is Elena Martín, actress and director of this masterpiece that is Creature, a film that beyond its success at the Gaudí awards – six awards – on Sunday is, quite simply, a masterpiece. This is said by someone who could have been one of those bonobos fighting on the platform.
Martín, who is also fantastic as an actress, explains with spartan economy how the little girl Mila begins to discover herself, or rather to manifest herself as a heterosexual woman of only five or six years. There is no morbidness or deception: the little girl simply prefers to play with the father than with the mother, touch him, play with him, and you quickly understand the heterosexual embryo that reigns in her. The film wraps this taboo in silk.
By contrast, it also portrays the other side. At one point, the grown-up Mila tries to find out if her father considers himself affectionate. This one – a phenomenal Álex Brendemühl – doesn't know. It is something that has never been considered.
A masterpiece, actually a coin with face and cross, full of implications. The ones that go to the jaw.
