Critic applauds virtual premiere of "Cerdita" at Sundance

The Sundance festival, which this year is being held in a virtual format, has just premiered Carlota Pereda's film "Cerdita" in its Midnight section, an expansion of the short of the same title with which she won a Goya in 2019. Critics have been full of praise for Pereda's work and, above all, for its protagonist, the actress Laura Galán, who plays Sara, a teenager immersed in violence and bullying because of her overweight. The Spanish director and screenwriter has been the only one to have represented the country at the festival, and she has already commented on her enthusiasm for participating in the competition: "Sundance is a festival that I have admired all my life, from which many of the artists who most master. The whole team feels that our Sara, played by Laura Galán, could not have a better presentation to the world than Sundance. They are made just the way they are." He knows about bullying firsthand, having been in this situation on several occasions because of his sexual orientation and having to change centers on several occasions due to his family mobility. The story follows Sara, harassed by her classmates until it reaches its climax when she goes to an empty swimming pool and finds a stranger there, to immediately suffer a harsh episode of violence by three popular girls from the town, which ends with Sara walking home barely covered in her bathing suit after the humiliation she experienced. The stranger appears driving a truck, in which he sees his bloody stalkers asking for help. Sara's desire for revenge and her strange connection to the kidnapper will pose a moral dilemma that will end in a bloody horror, for which the entire permissive and even violence-inducing community is responsible." This haunting psychological drama becomes a blood-soaked horror, but its genre extremes never mask the sense that its social commentary on violence and abuse comes from a very real and personal place," David Rooney wrote in the Hollywood Reporter. For his part, Jonathan Holland of Screen International, highlights that the Spanish film "cleverly combines elements of suspense, rural drama and comedy into a carefully crafted, powerfully atmospheric and exhilarating whole, with buckets full of blood and horror thrown in just the right measure". Finally, in the pages of Variety, Holly Jones states that Pereda "presents a cheeky look into the psyche of youth—its mistakes, rage and insecurity. Known for pushing the boundaries of the genre, the filmmaker roundhouse kicks and annihilates them." More "Cerdita"Regarding the differences between the short and this long version, the former ended with the kidnapping of the adolescents. Now, Pereda has introduced more depth than what he offered then: "The three girls in the short are almost identical. They have the same hairstyle, they wear the same clothes with little variation. Here, the idea was reversed. To make it more real , to have more layers; the more layers, the better. Although it's simple, you can really understand how these three different girls do what they do for very different reasons," he said in an interview with Variety. About Sara's relationship with the stranger, he explained : "I wanted to express the idea of ​​the bad boyfriend and the bad guys, the glamorization that we do. Also, why sometimes when you're a teenager, the first guy that looks at you, your friends almost say: 'oh, you should go out with him ' Why? Just because he noticed me? No. He wanted to express these kinds of weird things, that the public is almost rooting for me to date him." In addition to Laura Galán's extraordinary performance, Carmen Machi stands out in the role of the overprotective and domineering mother, along with Julián Valcárcel in the role of Sara's father, owner of the butcher shop where the teenager is working that summer. Richard Holmes is the unknown kidnapper and the stalkers, Irene Ferreiro, Camile Aguilar and Claudia Salas. Follow our latest news on TWITTER.