Before starting the review of La casa di carta 4, of which we were able to preview the first five episodes out of eight, we need to make a brief summary. The gang is in the Bank of Spain, where they entered to steal gold and save Rio (Miguel Herrán), who was captured and tortured by the police. Negotiating with the inspector Alicia Sierra (Najwa Nimri), the Professor (Álvaro Morte) and associates manage to free the boy, but the plan, conceived by Berlin (Pedro Alonso), gradually falls apart. Palermo (Rodrigo de la Serna), Berlin's right-hand man, soon comes into conflict with Tokyo (Úrsula Corberó). The Professor loses clarity because this time he is clouded by feelings for Lisbon (Itziar Ituño), which the police make him believe is dead. He then asks Palermo to declare war on the state: the gang fires two rockets at an Army armored vehicle and in the fight Nairobi (Alba Flores) is wounded in the chest.
An increasingly soap-like story
Now there are no more doubts: Álex Pina, creator of La casa di carta, in writing the series (on Netflix with the new episodes of the fourth season from 3 April) has certainly consulted with the screenwriters of The eyes of the heart, the soap at the center of the events told in Boris. We had already said it around here: the Spanish opera is actually a soap opera disguised as a heist movie, a strange cross between Beautiful and Inside Man.
This time, however, we go further: if in fact in the third cycle of episodes, with the entrance on the scene of the American streaming giant, we tried to push on the action pedal, with a Tokyo transformed into a sort of Lara Croft and shootings and do not finish, here the action is often put aside to focus on relationships between characters, which are precisely the weak point of La casa di carta. It is incredible how, in an international panorama in which, for at least 20 years, we have been working on carefully chiselling the TV protagonists, focusing on an increasingly refined writing of dialogues and characters, La casa di carta insists on taking the completely opposite path . There is not a character in this series who manages to remain consistent with himself, in his choices and actions.
A monument to the cringe
Let's think at the beginning of The House of Paper 4: Tokyo the choice of the Professor to entrust the command of the new mission to Palermo is not let down. She then bursts into her room to tell him that "she doesn't like that." The Professore however, he is engaged in intimate attitudes with Lisbon and tries to send her away. What began as a discussion about power and the figure of a good leader - a very timely speech - is immediately diverted to an embarrassing scene, in which a threesome is alluded to. "So de botto", as the aforementioned Boris screenwriters would say.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg: characters who a moment before declare their unconditional love for their partner, we find them a few minutes later drooling on another, comparing women to various types of cars (where is Nairobi when need to rise up against the patriarchy ?!). L'Inspector Sierra, pregnant and engaged in a difficult interrogation, she changes from one scene to another nail color, as if nothing had happened. Finally, perhaps to make it clear that this is a Spanish series, elements such as a bull and different pots of paella are introduced, in an absolutely extemporaneous way, in contexts and moments that can only make you smile. The cringe literally reigns supreme, as does chaos.
Are we Latins or Germans ?!
The most cinephiles will recognize 4 different in The House of Paper references to cult films: from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, passing through Indiana Jones (rightly they took their cue from the fourth, the one that doesn't exist), up to the Matrix elevator scene (sacrilege!). Even here, however, there is to be raised: everything is redone in a parody, patched-up way, with actors who cannot be credible in their movements even when they are chained and a confused direction of the action scenes, deliberately imprecise, in order to distract the viewer and make him more easily accept all the shortcomings of a series that has made chaos its heart.
It could be said that it is all a metaphor, that the gang is the people who try to oppose a government that does not care about the individual citizen, that the confusion in which the protagonists have fallen is due to the momentary loss of the group's mind. But it would be looking for superstructures in a product that instead knows very well what it is and has no intention of being more than what it is, because this is precisely its winning weapon. We would like to quote a famous joke by René Ferretti in this regard, but it would be a bit too vulgar. Instead, we decided to take a Zen attitude: if before we insisted on noting the writing defects, the inconsistencies in the editing and appearance of the protagonists, the meaningless dialogues and the confused action scenes, now we are almost admired, making our own Totò's joke "who knows where he wants to go".
Even the protagonists say it for themselves, who never miss an opportunity to interrupt crucial actions and fundamental scenes with unlikely ballets, shouting: "Are we Latins or Germans? Music!". So yes, let's do like the Back to the Future Doc: Is the paper house a questionable product? Is it so surreal and ridiculous that it goes around and becomes fun? And then "who cares". Let's not ask ourselves questions, let's not go crazy after the millions of defects, but let's get carried away by nonsense and melodrama. Also because the unpublished versions of Ti amo by Umberto Tozzi and Cerco un permanent center of gravity by Franco Battiato are the definitive shark jump: leave all hope of logic, consistency and good taste or you who watch.
Comment
Resources4Gaming.com
5.5
As written in the review of La casa di carta 4, these new episodes push more and more on the pedal of the improbable, putting aside any pretense of logic, ringing a series of surreal (and even embarrassing) scenes after the other. There is no middle ground: either you accept the fact that the Netflix series is a deliberately grotesque product or it's better to watch something else. Those who love La casa di carta will also love this fourth season, because it endlessly proposes all its typical elements, those who cannot make it go down instead will get angry for the umpteenth time.
PRO
- For those who appreciate, there is always more: music;
- melodrama;
- nonsense
- For those who don't like it: now without any brakes, everything is a monument to the cringe
- The action scenes are confusing
- The characters are never consistent with themselves, resulting in two-dimensional
