Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2014; the film’s standing as the most-watched in Spanish cinemas after Avatar was its position at the time of writing, and its final box-office figures may differ.
The Spanish film “Ocho apellidos vascos” (released in English as Spanish Affairs) is now the second most-watched film ever in Spanish cinemas, behind only Avatar. People are now looking for an explanation of why this film has been such a huge box-office hit, and the explanations on offer praise its great marketing strategy or its clever premise of watching two cultures as different as the Basque and the Andalusian clash.
In my personal opinion, I don’t think the box-office success is down to either of these things. The real explanation may hurt, but it is probably the truth that Spanish cinema needs to face.
What happens with a large share of Spanish cinema is that they make crap and try to sell it to you as culture and art. They tend to turn out real stinkers that would bore anyone, and just like with bad jokes, when you don’t laugh they tell you it’s because it was intelligent humour and so “you didn’t get it”.
In fact, according to film download platforms, Spanish films are the least downloaded. In other words, if hardly anyone wants to watch them even for free on pirate sites, who is going to pay for them?
I’m a great lover of cinema (of good cinema), and that’s why years ago I told myself: “I’m not sitting through a single Spanish film ever again.”
Now and then, after a good trailer, I’ve decided to make an exception, and once again I found that the only thing worth watching was the trailer, and I felt like a complete idiot for wasting my time like that.
What changed with “Ocho apellidos vascos”?
Never before had so many people recommended that I go to the cinema to see a Spanish film, and given its box-office success I obviously wanted to find out whether it really was my own bias against Spanish cinema, or whether this film might be one of those exceptions.
And sure enough, it’s not that you walk out saying “what a film”, but the truth is that, unlike others, this film isn’t out to win a Goya (Spain’s national film awards), and nobody set out to make art. They simply went for the most effective recipe in cinema, which is to entertain the audience and, in this case, make it laugh, making the most of Dani Rovira, a stand-up comedian of the moment who draws the crowds and has more than proved his talent as an actor.
It isn’t the typical Spanish film with endless, boring dialogue whose only purpose is to show what a fine actor or actress the person boring you on the big screen is. Nor is it a film that uses the actress of the moment baring her breasts as bait to pull in audiences.
They simply made a film, and the marketing strategy behind such success has been word of mouth, one of the most effective strategies there is, and one that only works when something is good.
I honestly believe that is the only secret behind the success of “Ocho apellidos vascos”, and so I would advise the rest of Spain’s film directors to make less culture and art, and more films.
At least, that’s my humble personal opinion.
Featured image: Ruben Ortega, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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