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A revenge tale
Oct. 18th, 2019 02:32 pmThese days we're watching two Spanish-language shows on Netflix. One is La Reina del Flow (The Queen of Flow), an 82-episode-long revenge tale that we're only 30 episodes into. Talented teen lyricist Yeimi Montoya is invited by her best pal, Juancho, to join Soul and Bass, a duo consisting of Juancho and another teen, Charly Cruz, whom Yeimi has a huge crush on, but who has never even noticed her. (Juancho, in turn, loves Yeimi, but she only thinks of him as a friend.) All three of them are barrio kids on the outskirts of Medellín, but Charlie has a pretty face, and Soul and Bass has a good tunes--with Yeimi's lyrics they might just get a recording deal. Unfortunately Charly is a self-absorbed narcissist with a crime lord for an uncle.
We need to spend a moment on the uncle, Manín. He is likely to have killed Charly's dad (though at episode 30, that's still not certain) in order to put the moves on Charly's mom, who eventually does acquiesce and marry him. He's ordered Yeimi's bakery-running parents killed when they're unable to make a protection payment. He slouches everywhere and is usually eating something, or drinking.
Manín has been in the habit of strong-arming Charly into doing jobs for him, and in one of those jobs, he ends up killing someone--and Yeimi witnesses it. She insists Charly turn himself in, but *that* certainly isn't happening--instead Charly asks his uncle for help, and next thing you know, Yeimi is in prison in the United States for acting as a drug mule (Charly having planted drugs on her when they head to New York to meet a producer). Charly also steals her notebook of lyrics, so he can keep on creating hit songs. Oh, and he seduced her, so she gives birth in prison and then gives the baby to her grandmother--but Manín kills the grandmother and steals the baby, because Charly's mom--now Manín's wife--wants another baby. He doesn't say anything about the baby's parentage, so now that child, who's actually Charly's son, is being raised as Charly's brother. The same actor plays this child, Erik, and young-Charly (glasses and a different hair style distinguishing them).
Got the picture? So 17 years later, when a DEA agent offers Yeimi a chance to get out of prison if she helps to catch the uncle, she agrees, reasoning that she can use this chance to get revenge on Charly, who's now the successful reggaeton star Charly Flow,** with a beautiful wife and daughter. In the guise of Tammy Andrade, music producer and talent scout, she intends to take away from Charly everything that he's taken away from her.
So... you sympathize with her, and Charly really is a self-involved asshole. But the story takes you into the lives of Charly's wife and daughter, too, and it's clear that Yeimi's mission is going to have profound collateral damage. Juancho is still around, running a recording studio, and when Tammy reveals that she's actually Yeimi, he urges her to get the ultimate revenge, which is to lead a happy life and to forget about revenge. So the show has this tension, because on the one hand it invites you in for vengeful wish fulfillment, but on the other hand, it highlights the problems with this. But if you begin to truly think it's a problem, then you can't root for Yeimi wholeheartedly. Or maybe at all?
I'm not a huge fan of how the actress who plays grow-up Yeimi portrays her--but it's probably in part down to the writing and the directing. I'm hoping they'll add something to enrich her character. I suspect they will--the trailer shows her recording her own songs, and that hasn't happened yet, and we still have 52 episodes to fill. Right now I have more sympathy for Charly's wife, whom we're meant, I think, to see as self-absorbed the same way Charly is, but who's struggling to raise their daughter and put together a life for herself ... she feels more three-dimensional to me that Yeimi.
The other Spanish-language show we're watching is Frontera Verde, a *completely* different type of show, which takes place in the Amazon--but I'll talk about that another time.
Trailer for Reina del Flow
**Based visually on Colombian reggaeton star Maluma:
grown-up Charly
Maluma
... ughh, and while I don't usually care about spoilers, in looking for those images I've inadvertently seen one I sort of do care about.
We need to spend a moment on the uncle, Manín. He is likely to have killed Charly's dad (though at episode 30, that's still not certain) in order to put the moves on Charly's mom, who eventually does acquiesce and marry him. He's ordered Yeimi's bakery-running parents killed when they're unable to make a protection payment. He slouches everywhere and is usually eating something, or drinking.
Manín has been in the habit of strong-arming Charly into doing jobs for him, and in one of those jobs, he ends up killing someone--and Yeimi witnesses it. She insists Charly turn himself in, but *that* certainly isn't happening--instead Charly asks his uncle for help, and next thing you know, Yeimi is in prison in the United States for acting as a drug mule (Charly having planted drugs on her when they head to New York to meet a producer). Charly also steals her notebook of lyrics, so he can keep on creating hit songs. Oh, and he seduced her, so she gives birth in prison and then gives the baby to her grandmother--but Manín kills the grandmother and steals the baby, because Charly's mom--now Manín's wife--wants another baby. He doesn't say anything about the baby's parentage, so now that child, who's actually Charly's son, is being raised as Charly's brother. The same actor plays this child, Erik, and young-Charly (glasses and a different hair style distinguishing them).
Got the picture? So 17 years later, when a DEA agent offers Yeimi a chance to get out of prison if she helps to catch the uncle, she agrees, reasoning that she can use this chance to get revenge on Charly, who's now the successful reggaeton star Charly Flow,** with a beautiful wife and daughter. In the guise of Tammy Andrade, music producer and talent scout, she intends to take away from Charly everything that he's taken away from her.
So... you sympathize with her, and Charly really is a self-involved asshole. But the story takes you into the lives of Charly's wife and daughter, too, and it's clear that Yeimi's mission is going to have profound collateral damage. Juancho is still around, running a recording studio, and when Tammy reveals that she's actually Yeimi, he urges her to get the ultimate revenge, which is to lead a happy life and to forget about revenge. So the show has this tension, because on the one hand it invites you in for vengeful wish fulfillment, but on the other hand, it highlights the problems with this. But if you begin to truly think it's a problem, then you can't root for Yeimi wholeheartedly. Or maybe at all?
I'm not a huge fan of how the actress who plays grow-up Yeimi portrays her--but it's probably in part down to the writing and the directing. I'm hoping they'll add something to enrich her character. I suspect they will--the trailer shows her recording her own songs, and that hasn't happened yet, and we still have 52 episodes to fill. Right now I have more sympathy for Charly's wife, whom we're meant, I think, to see as self-absorbed the same way Charly is, but who's struggling to raise their daughter and put together a life for herself ... she feels more three-dimensional to me that Yeimi.
The other Spanish-language show we're watching is Frontera Verde, a *completely* different type of show, which takes place in the Amazon--but I'll talk about that another time.
Trailer for Reina del Flow
**Based visually on Colombian reggaeton star Maluma:
grown-up Charly
Maluma
... ughh, and while I don't usually care about spoilers, in looking for those images I've inadvertently seen one I sort of do care about.
