Complexity or emotional pornography

The other day I went to the movies with my high school friends. It had been years since we'd done that because, as Juliana Canet once said, our get-togethers have been planned for a while now and are just a way to catch up. I have to say that meeting up to catch up with them is something I always look forward to; especially since half of us can no longer live in Barcelona and our regular get-togethers around the neighborhood are a thing of the past, for reasons beyond simply getting older and having more responsibilities.

The thing is, we headed towards the Verdi, like when we were young and Gràcia wasn't yet a gentrified neighborhood and hipsterWe looked HamnetBecause we had all read and enjoyed Maggie O'Farrell's novel (published in Catalan by La Otra Editorial and translated by Marc Rubió Rodon), and we'd also heard wonderful things about the film adaptation. When we left, we all agreed that our expectations had been deflated. It was funny, because at the same time we were saying it with swollen eyes, because of all the crying. It was like those late-night binge-eating sessions women do in Puerta del Sol. We'd devour them without a second thought, but when the stomach ache started and that frenzy began, we promised each other we'd never buy another one.

The line between complexity and emotional pornography is subtle. The former relies on the time, silences, and spaces that the reader or viewer must fill in themselves to eventually leave a lasting impression. Emotional pornography, however, seeks immediate impact, easy tears. It has no interest in imagination or complicity: it pours everything out like a goose destined for pâté.

In the novel, O'Farrell works with complexity: the courtship between Agnes and William unfolds through intuition, playfulness, and small gestures. In the film, their connection feels like a Grindr encounter behind a bush on Montjuïc. The entire adaptation, in fact, is tinged with the accelerated logic of this social media age: everything happens quickly and without context, for fear of boring the viewer and making them want to check their phones. The narrative time ends up being a TikTok video with brief, abruptly cut scenes that don't allow the characters to breathe or for their relationships to develop. Similarly, the music doesn't accompany the story; instead, it tells you what to listen to, like a... reel Instagram that guides you through a tangle of prefabricated emotions.

The result is paradoxical because, yes, the film does make you cry at times, or has beautiful images, but it doesn't resonate with you. The emotions are fleeting, like so many stimuli in the digital world: a spark amidst endless tears of Saint Lawrence. Even the film's ending, which is well done, becomes absurdly long and repels the viewer instead of drawing them in, much like the protagonist's cries of grief over her son's death. In Hollywood, they often confuse loud screaming (or wearing a long nose, or pretending to be fat and ugly) with emotional depth. This is how we should see women represented.

One of our upcoming plans with friends is to read Wuthering Heights And then she returned to the Verdi. We know we'll end up stuffed again, just like when we go back to the neighborhood that also kicked us out, but nobody can take away the laundry we did and the fantastic afternoon we'll have.