Fernán Gómez's privileged intelligence made possible one of the darkest, most grotesque and tragicomic films in Spanish cinema. It's called “The Strange Journey.” The censors tried to put shackles on it, but there it is. Alive and caustic after so long. I think of their argument as they reported on a terrible real-life event. Two sisters and their brother, without a partner, were murdered in a village. They are accused by a man who failed to repay a loan of fifty thousand euros. They transferred this money to the checking account of two imaginary American soldiers whom they had never met but who offered to marry them. In her insane mind, they were her friends, another fraud by technology that ends with the death of this family. How scary this deadly man is. And what a shame for those who betrayed the two maidens with the desire for love.
In the frightening film series “The Fifth Commandment,” the barbarities continue to affect emotions. It's not fiction. The shock happened. The great Battiato said in his song The Season of Love: “Desires do not age despite age.” In the heart there remains a new enthusiasm for life.” This enthusiasm is used by a cultured beast with ambitions to become a priest to save two elderly people, to make those who are very lonely fall in love. Both with nice houses and money. He is a passive homosexual, an enlightened and lyrical man, a virgin, religious, someone who feels loved and believes he loves for the first time in his bleak life. She gave up the feeling of love a long time ago, but she can't cope with her tranquil existence. Both are exploited, manipulated, humiliated and slowly poisoned by this young man, con artist, mystical, greedy, sentimental predator who specializes in seducing the tired hearts of the vulnerable. Evil exists in different forms and uses different strategies to destroy others. And it is even more disgusting when it concerns the weak, children and the elderly.
“The Fifth Commandment” is a production of the careful BBC. It's not a masterpiece, but it's believable. And the personality of this smiling, detail-oriented monster, calculating to the point of disgust, inspires fear and makes his playing with other people's emotions deadly. And as always with the justification for everything for the money, even for the sentimental exchange. I can't remember who wrote that no man wants to be an island. But the beasts know how to attack them. For the heart.
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