Netflix just released Manual for young ladies, a romantic-cheesy period comedy that imitates The Bridgertons, both in form and content. In this version, the protagonist is Miss Bianda, a young woman who earns her living as a lady-in-waiting for girls of marriageable age to ensure that the men they choose will respect her honor. A widower hires her to manage the love lives of his three daughters. And an idle godson will be the last straw in all kinds of triangulations and erotic-festive entanglements. Now, if anyone expects to see asses, breasts, exhalations of pleasure, and intense horseback riding inside carriages, don't get your hopes up, because this one Manual for young ladies It is more modest than its American counterpart. This series has the scents of Benito Pérez Galdós' literature, with marital intrigues, arguments between sisters, reputational conflicts, and strategies to maintain status. A poorly mixed cocktail of Fortunata and Jacinta, Bringas's and Torment. As is usual in this type of plot, witty dialogue, spicy sarcasm, mischievous coquetry, and affected decorum are sought. However, the plots are extremely predictable and seek to seduce the most dull audience, driven by the thrill of flirting rather than by a critical spirit and the audacity to build conflicts.
The period context lacks any rigor, and, regarding The Brigertons, have not dared to depict a society so imaginatively diverse and multiracial. Nor have they dared to make use of the same sexual debauchery, but have limited themselves to insinuation and convention, with a touch of lesbianism to appear more daring. Of course, while in The Bridgertons Originally it was very difficult for women to get pregnant to ensure a show with the maximum number of copulations possible, Manual for young ladies The aim is hasty, and the fertility, extreme. It's almost a warning of punishment for foolish ladies.
Where the copy is most accurate is in the setting and the film's approach. They resort to the artificiality of baroque gardens and intensely green parks crowded with bougainvillea, with labyrinths and heart-shaped bushes. For the majestic mansions, they make use of modernist architecture, retouching the different buildings of the Hospital de Sant Pau until they become magnificent houses in the center of an imaginary city with an aristocratic Madrid air, or converting the chapel of the Almudena cemetery into a warm one. Everything, passed through the splendid digital filter, until the series becomes a cheap imitation to entertain damsels.
What is lazy is once again the pretext of period series with contemporary music to sell us the most thunderous and cheesy sexism as an erotic and exciting way to relate. In a social context like the one we live in now, this Manual for young ladies It seems like the ideal production of the extreme right to convince the uncritical female audience of the virtues of conservatism.
