The most tense film in San Sebastián is an underwater thriller.

Special Envoy to San SebastiánIf a Netflix production opened the San Sebastian Festival on Friday, this Saturday it was Movistar+ who presented the first great Spanish film in the competition, the thriller by Alberto Rodríguez The tigersFor now, the platforms are considering the cherries of audiovisual productions, which includes festivals. The tigers It is a good film, surely the most well-rounded by its director since The minimal island and, unlike this one and Model 77, has no historical or sociological ambitions and is therefore more solid in the construction of the plot and the characters. The protagonists are two submariner brothers from Huelva (Antonio de la Torre and Barbara Lennie), children and grandchildren of scuba divers, who work doing repairs or maintenance on oil platforms and ships, a kind of miners of the sea who risk their lives every day for four duros.

Rodríguez films this work universe in an immersive way and immerses himself with the characters to capture the tension but also the wild beauty of the underwater universe, and designs a suspenseful plot based on the discovery of some drug packages being transported to an oil tanker. The result is a tense and absorbing film that avoids the sensationalism of some of Rodríguez's previous films. The Sevillian director, who in a few days will present the serial adaptation of Javier Cercas' book at the festival Anatomy of an instant, has reached a sweet spot in his mastery of the craft that allows him to explore the complex relationship between the characters of De la Torre and Lennie while advancing the criminal intrigue with great grit and narrative solidity. What a joy it is to watch a director and actors simply display their talent, especially in the case of De la Torre who, as usual, is extraordinary again.

From the world of professional scuba diving The tigers, the official competition has jumped to another stage that, a priori, does not seem very attractive for the cinema: that of the great industrial project that is being built – it is not very clear with what objective – by some workers in a dusty and lost African region. Le cri des gardes [The Cry of the Guards] is the new film by one of the great authors of modern auteur cinema, Frenchwoman Claire Denis, and also one of the least inspired.

Based on the play by Bernard-Marie Koltès Combat of black te de chiens [Combat between black men and dogs], Denis films with intention and style the dialectical confrontation between the construction foreman (Matt Dillon) and the brother of one of the black workers (Isaach de Bankolé), murdered with impunity by a white engineer. Meanwhile, the arrival of the foreman's young wife from London adds an element of strangeness and sexual tension that doesn't quite connect with the central conflict. In the past, Denis has demonstrated his ability to create fascinating films from stories that are sometimes mere excuses to deploy his sensual camera and investigate the complexity of the characters, but Le cri des gardes It doesn't survive the heaviness of its forced dialogue, although there are always small moments of beauty and scenes that recall the director's greatness.

More stimulating has been the passage through the official competition of another of the bastions of French art-house cinema, Arnaud Desplechin, which continues to revolve around its usual themes: love and its impossibility, destiny, friendship, family as a curse. In Two pianos [Two Pianos], a pianist returning to Lyon after a few years in Japan runs into an old lover as he opens the elevator door and collapses to the floor. It's such an exaggerated and, at the same time, sincere moment that it fits beautifully with the director's always exuberant cinema. Kings and queensThe film wraps up the plot with the appearance of an unknown son and an unexpected death, elements that allow Desplechin to play with the pieces on the counter with his usual charm, especially when the charisma of Charlotte Rampling, who plays the protagonist's mentor, makes an appearance.

Eduard Fernández, award and vindication

There's a lot happening in San Sebastián at the cinemas these days, but also outside. For example, the presentation of the National Film Award to Eduard Fernández, who greeted him with a Palestinian scarf around his neck. "Out of respect for Shakespeare and my profession, it's inevitable to hold a mirror to the world and, at this moment, denounce the barbarity that is happening in Gaza. Letting children die of hunger is barbaric, whether you call it genocide or not," he added. "Anyone who isn't shocked by the genocide in Gaza has a problem with their own fault," he added.