It seems once you hit 30, maybe even way before then, keeping in touch with friends becomes more and more difficult. The idea of leaving your home to go a half hour or god forbid, an hour, to visit someone can seem like a fate worse than death.
Writer/director Jonás Trueba brings viewers into the inner lives of 4 friends in Madrid at the end of 2020 in You Have To Come And See It. Both couples are out for drinks and music and reconnecting after a year of not seeing each other. It is clear that the friendship is one-sided. Elena (Itsaso Arana) and Daniel (Vito Sanz) are local to Madrid and Susana (Irene Escolar) and Guillermo (Francesco Carril) live outside the city. Susana and Guillermo not only announce that they are expecting but also invite Elena and Daniel to visit them at their new home. For Elena and Daniel, the idea of taking a half-hour train out of the city is like Woody Allen living anywhere but Manhattan.
“…the inner lives of 4 friends in Madrid …”
Capturing the Jim Jarmusch and Woody Allen spirit, this film is simply people talking. You Have To Come And See It is a beautifully shot 64 minute vignette of friendship. Like those masters of film, Trueba captures that simple and comforting realism of the mundane everyday life. We can all relate to the empty promises of making plan with friends to getting stuck in our own comforts.
The acting is superb and borders on this feeling like a documentary. Screenwriters and filmmakers, pay attention to how this film navigates dialogue. There are no earth-shattering speeches, just simply people spending time with one another, talking about parenthood, books, art, philosophy, and politics.
There is warmth and familiarity to the movie, like the film Diner. But unlike Barry Levinson’s masterpiece, You Have To Come And See It lacks any sense of drama or resolution. Again, the film is just over 60 minutes. Just as we begin to suspect the film may be building to something unexpected, it ends. Perhaps there was no more story to tell, but with such interesting characters, this film would have benefited from another 30 minutes. Throw in an affair, a car crash, something to complete the story.
Instead, viewers can expect to be brought into a memory in the life of friends. Nothing dramatic or spectacular, but a moment that mattered among friends. In the closing words of the film, this is an “experience and the memory of an experience.”
"…There is warmth and familiarity"
