Venting on LA PATRONA

It’s hard to remember a telenovela as terrible as Telemundo's LA PATRONA that became a hit.  (Having just suffered through the first 10 episodes of CORAZÓN INDOMABLE, which is doing very well right now in Mexico, it just might be the year of terrible novelas becoming hits, but the jury is still out on that one - maybe it will get better.)

Back to LA PATRONA.  The performances range from the expectedly awful (Aracely Arámbula – pathetically phony as usual), shockingly inept (Jorge Luis Pila – he only seems capable of playing “arrogant dickhead”), one note (Christian Bach – who gives the exact same lilting read to every line and poses in every scene, arms back to hide the wrinkles on her neck and chest), to soporific (most of the supporting and younger actors).  Gonzalo García Vivanco and Erika de la Rosa manage some moments of life, but really, only Geraldine Zinat gives a performance consistently rich and of true feeling.

The plotting is absurdly terrible, rife with incongruities, faulty logic and holes.  Knowing the villainess played by Christian Bach is a several-time murderer who has done her and her family immeasurable harm, the heroine nevertheless decides to save her for last in her vengeance plot, allowing her to kill even more characters.

It is a telenovela brimming with incredibly stupid characters.  In the first 30-40 episodes, the heroes stupidly fall for every trap set by the villains.  The next 50 episodes see the villains fall for every trap set by the heroine.  Now, the two sides simply alternate their stupidity.

The vengeance plot of the heroine is so vague – it largely consists of her staring at photos of the baddies with targets drawn on them on a television monitor.  The villains are so evil, they would have killed themselves off without the intervention of the heroine.  The characters waft from event to event aimlessly - there is no psychology, no motivation - whatever is required by the plot at the time is what they do, and they seem to forget events that happened just a few episodes earlier.

LA PATRONA is so terrible, it would at least make for decent camp if the whole enterprise was not so morally dubious.  The first 30 episodes are nothing but an escalating accumulation of atrocities committed against the heroine meant to invoke a bloodlust in the audience so they can then revel in the suffering of the villains.  Thus, the audience is supposed to cheer when a woman gets raped in the desert – she’s just getting what she deserves.  It’s a novela that requires the audience to check its humanity and empathy for human suffering.

Problems in Product Placement on Telenovelas

So far, the web novelas produced by Univision and Telemundo have been heavy on sponsor plugs, light on drama.  Kate del Castillo’s web novela ARRANQUE DE PASIÓN took the clever step of setting its drama amidst the world of NASCAR, where the sponsorship of the vehicles can tie-in with the show’s sponsors less obtrusively.  Nevertheless, there were still shots of Kate applying Mary Kay cosmetics and sending cash via Western Union.  When each installment of these web novelas average about 8 minutes in length, the 15 to 30 seconds it takes for the product placements end up eating a far too large percentage of air time, the drama of a story is forced to share near equal time, and thus importance, with the commercials.

 

This is not a problem in the product placement that litters the telenovelas on television.  Product plugs are so commonplace now as to no longer inspire a raised eyebrow, except in rare instances where characters suddenly begin spouting adspeak.

The product placement is usually harmless enough – supporting character buying lunch at Subway and the like.

Recently, however, there was a terrible miscalculation in the employment of product placement on Telemundo’s telenovela PASIÓN PROHIBIDA in the midst of a momentous moment in that novela’s story that actually undermined the drama.

In the story, Bianca (Mónica Spear) and Bruno (Jencarlos Canela) are passionately drawn to each other, a problem as Bianca is married to Bruno’s uncle Ariel, who has raised Bruno like a son.  Bianca and Bruno have had several hot and heavy encounters where they come close to consummating their passion, but have always stopped themselves, guilty of betraying Ariel.  Finally, on this night, their passion overwhelms them.

The scene as it plays on the telenovela has  Bianca moping about, hurt and jealous because that night Bruno went out with another girl.  Bianca is stalking through the night, restless, waiting for him to return.  When he does, they exchange a look, which is ambiguous.  She walks off toward Ariel’s workroom, the same room where Bianca and Bruno had their first kiss.  Bruno follows her.

It is at this point that there is a commercial break.  The first ad in the break is for the Toyota automobile that Bianca hid behind when Bruno came home.  The premise of the ad is we now see how each of the characters interpreted the other’s look.  Needless to say, the ambiguity is removed and we are now treated to fairly crass, obvious come-ons from the characters, the heady atmosphere and suspense within the novela, vitiated.

The Specialness of Not-So-Special Special Effects

Que Bonito Amor

While watching QUÉ BONITO AMOR - a telenovela which my brain recognizes is flawed in dozens of ways, yet makes me smile from beginning to end – we were treated to some dodgy CGI effects as the hero takes off in a sabotaged private plane in an attempt to escape from police.

The effects made me think of the effects in another telenovela that also starred Danna García, BELLA CALAMIDADES, where at one point, the bad luck heroine suddenly takes flight in a flying machine created by a boy inventor.  The effects were no doubt ridiculous and poor, entirely unconvincingly, yet I absolutely adored them.

Bella Calamidades

It made me come to the realization that many of the special effects I treasure most nowadays are those that are the most artificial.  Of course, there is an inescapable artificiality in even the most stunningly convincing special effects.  Ultimately, none register as “real,” really, because our brains recognize the events and images occurring on screen as impossible.  But there was a charm in the effects work of the past – in models, puppets, etc, and a sense of the human touch that is largely missing from modern CGI effects.  It is a cliché to label computers as cold, but the effects are depersonalized compared to the effects of yesteryear - I long to see the fingerprints.

Doctor Who CGI shot

Doctor Who model shot

And how dull it is to try to approximate reality in effects, the imagination of effects artists should strive for something beyond reality, something magical and fantastic.  It seems only in the failings to render reality convincingly that I see some approximation of the unreality which, of course, is the realm of magic.