Summary
This successful and very short miniseries by Ana Katz is once again inscribed in her ineffable register of "comedy of discomfort", a dramedy with catastrophe stalking her characters in the most unthinkable and ineffable ways and moments. The story develops numerous current topics, but without going down the line. Without avoiding harshness, her gaze on her characters is always more loving than ironic. A very good cast of new figures and other consecrated ones stands out.
Review:
The series reflects some breaking moments in the lives of three close friends at the age of 30 and their consequences.
Ana Katz's films could be inscribed in the subgenre of "comedy of discomfort", with her characters stalked by the catastrophe in the most unexpected ways and moments, but always with the benign gaze of someone who loves her characters beyond irony and that never infantilizes them. In the case of Nicolasa, Mimí and June, the three protagonists of this series, health and physical problems will be the triggers for their future adventures and changes.
Nicolasa (Johanna Chiefo, whose idea gave rise to the series), is a young "chubby" actress who tirelessly shows up to fiction and commercial castings and defends herself by selling homemade empanadas; Mimí (Carolina Kopelioff), is the popular protagonist of a TV strip and influencer and June, a young insulin-dependent diabetic.
Slowly, the series introduces us to each one's family circles, which will play an important role in each of their stories: Nicolasa's father and his partner (Luis Ziembrowski and Inés Estévez), Mimí's mother (Nancy Dupláa ) and June's parents. Finally comes the moment when the three meet and their stories and environments begin to interact.
In this way, Katz (also a screenwriter with her brother Daniel and others) weaves a choral dramedy that always surprises, since she never becomes enamored with certain situations by repeating them. Her ineffable touches of humor nuance (and enhance) a predominantly dramatic imprint. The series is short and its total duration is that of a long movie. However, its series format seems appropriate to me, with timely ellipses between its chapters.
Each chapter begins with an epigraph from Beckett: "You tried. You failed. Does not matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." If we read carefully, we see the announcement that fortunately it is not a story about resilience or success; there is no lowering of the line on the numerous topics that appear in the story and that the series frankly faces and exposes: (in)dependence (of all kinds) with respect to parents, housing, how to deal with a chronic illness, social mandates about the body, confidence, perseverance, the body that says enough, the panacea of healthy eating. Ana Katz manages to avoid falling into frank satire on the one hand, much less idealizing on the other. It is not complacent, it can be harsh, but it is also constructive: "catastrophes" never have definitively terminal consequences.
In addition to its ability to intertwine stories, like any good story, Supernova triumphs thanks to its solid script and its characters, especially the lights and shadows of Nicolasa and Mimí. Some of the best scenes are Mimí's therapy sessions, with Valentina Bassi as a psychoanalyst, achieved like I have rarely seen in a fiction, sessions where the silences and the looks of the remarkable Carolina Kopelioff say more than a thousand words.
