The new interpretative lesson of Oriol Pla at the hands of Javier Giner

Following the success of the series Yo, adicto (2024), Javier Giner once again teams up with Oriol Pla for his feature film debut. In This Loneliness, the director follows two characters in their thirties burdened by something more than loneliness: Leo (a Pla who even speaks in Basque) and Lorea (Marina Salas), who have just broken up as a couple and cannot find their respective paths in life. From their wandering parallel trajectories, Giner constructs an intense, raw portrait of a disoriented generation marked by a helplessness that has never been explicitly stated as such.

Giner injects the intensity of John Cassavetes' cinema into the gritty social realism setting of Basque cinema from the eighties and nineties, updated to the present day. Although it falters in its most intense moments, This Loneliness unfolds with a force and conviction rarely seen in a debut feature. In this sense, the two mature secondary characters who help break the self-absorption of these two protagonists sunk in a well of darkness are crucial.

This Loneliness starts with a clown performance by Leo. The interplay of contrasts between the uninhibited Oriol Pla when his character gives himself to his passion—performing theater as a clown—and the more intimate Pla who gives emotional depth to Leo off-stage is thrilling. Another masterclass in acting, explicitly acknowledged as such in one sequence, by the Catalan actor.