Somehow Fat People sounds less attractive. I know Gordos means the same thing, but still. The ¡Viva! festival of Spanish language films at Cornerhouse showed Gordos yesterday, to yet another full house. They could barely squeeze people in at the end, and it wasn’t all to do with our gordo-ness, so to speak.
Five fat people in therapy, talking about their fat lives. Through the film they lose weight or put it back on or stay the same or get a little fatter. They talk about why. We see their lives away from the therapy sessions.
It’s described as a comedy, and it is a comedy. Sort of. Plenty of laughs, but possibly mostly from the non-gordos of the audience? Eating more pizza or having sex is more amusing for being done by fat people. Yes, it was funny. But it was also sad to see the lives people lead.
At least it didn’t follow the routes of either proving you become happier when you’ve slimmed down, or that you can love yourself despite of or because of being fat. You just are.
What did surprise me was to find that it had been filmed in real time with the actors eating themselves fat or starving themselves thin and again and again. I hope none of them suffered lasting problems from this. One apparently couldn’t make himself fat (I disliked him from the start!) so was killed off in the end, as an alternative to ending up fat. Which is one way of looking at this sad state of affairs.
And not once was I tempted to eat the spare sandwich in my bag…
(Antonio de la Torre, left, who reputedly put on 33 kg.)
Kilo away!
CultureWitch 