Escuchar
Breathe (Spain/2024). Creator: Carlos Montero. List: Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Najwa Nimri, Blanca Suarez, Manu Rios, Borja Luna, Antonio Bassave, Xoan Forneas, April Zamora, Ana Rayo, Marwa Bakhat, Blanca Martinez. Available in: Netflix. Our opinion: buena.
Within the panorama of medical series, the 90s were exemplary: they established the narrative axis in the whirlwind of the profession, often torn between their ethical and professional commitment and the whirlwind of their private lives. The two emblematic series of that decade premiered just one day apart in September 1994: the first was Chicago Hopecreated by David E. Kelley, and the second, the one that lasted the longest on the screen and in the public’s imagination, was ER Emergenciesby physician and novelist Michael Crichton.
The key, in both, was to barely leave the professional space – the hospital or the emergency room -, going over in each episode the ailments of several patients that involved the main characters, and in the following broadcast renewing the patients and exploring the continuity of the doctors’ personal affairs.
With the arrival of Grey’s Anatomymedical series embraced a more fictional style, and the search for realism in the staging of the profession gave way to sentimental tumults as the axis of the dramatic evolution of fiction. Throughout its 20 seasons – and those to come – the series created by Shonda Rhimes – a new conception in terms of showrunnerwith a style of his own that seems to overflow in all his fictions – he changed cast, conflicts, came and went in time, revived lost stories, changed couples and friendships, and created a manual more similar to the ‘soap opera’ General Hospital than the nerve that its predecessors had achieved in the 90s.
It is on this more soap opera-like path that the Spanish series is positioned. Breathecreated by Carlos Montero (Elite) and supported by a cast of well-known names such as Aitana Sánchez Gijón, Najwa Nimri, Blanca Suárez, Borja Luna and Antonio Bassave, and the youngsters Manu Ríos, Xoán Fórneas and Marwa Bakhat.
Aitana Sánchez Gijón is a prestigious surgeon in Respira (Netflix).
The story is set in the Joaquín Sorolla Hospital, a fictional hospital in the city of Valencia, where the dispute between state and private health care that seems to permeate public debate in the world today is concentrated. A strike threatens to suspend an important operation by the prestigious surgeon Pilar Amaro (Sánchez Gijón) and her colleague, the oncologist Néstor Moa (Luna), revealing the latent tension in the medical environment. From there the story travels to the past three months, when a double front opened for the politics of the public hospital: on the one hand, the appearance of the president of the Valencian Community, Patricia Segura (Najwa Nimri), as an emergency oncology patient, who embodies the clash of her ideals of privatization with the specific problems of her health; and, on the other, the tragedy involving a resident doctor, responsible for the death of a patient when he is left in charge of a risky operation due to lack of staff.
What emerges from the exploration of the underlying medical conflict, in tension with the privatist politics of the community and the corporate defence of doctors, may be the most interesting, even if the style of the series abounds in discursive effects, a somewhat frenetic montage and the automated setting that defines all series today. What happens is that the ‘syndrome’ Grey’s Anatomy‘, which inspires to bathe the entire dramaturgy in romances, casual sex and a long list of personal entanglements, is already sensed in advance and is not the result of the wear and tear of a serial narrative, but of the deliberate intrusion of clichés to the supposed taste of the spectator. At times, the medical environment is barely a backdrop for dilemmas imposed by the script and the real disquisitions on the state of public health are diluted in rather superficial discussions.
Despite this, the work of the actors, especially Sánchez Gijón, the always stellar Nimri and Blanca Suárez –who is one of the best successes in the series– manages to imprint a certain humanity on a treatment of the conflicts that seems modeled to meet the ingredients of contemporary fiction: a bit of suspense, love and eroticism, and the necessary pinch of social conscience.
In this sense, Nimri lets herself be carried away by the stereotype of a cynical and opportunistic civil servant in the first episodes, and manages to progressively dismantle that shell, even beyond the mandates of the script. The same occurs with Suárez in her relationship with the young resident played by the singer Manu Ríos, a bond that achieves much more outside of the erotic scenes of the montage, perhaps in the glances or conversations that leave more light to the actors. The humanity of the interpretations manages to give greater weight to the conflicts than the vices that contemporary algorithms often impose.
Conocé The Trust Project
