– With the creative partnership of Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, Fernando González Molina pays tribute to Jaime de Armiñán’s classic in a festive and youthful, assertive and proudly intersexual plea
Elisabeth Martínez in My Dearest Señorita
Premiered worldwide in the official competition section of the 29th Malaga Film Festival, My Dearest Señorita is one of the event’s most eagerly awaited feature films. First, because it is a revisits the film that earned its director, Jaime de Armiñán, an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1972, a work co‑written with another visionary ahead of his time, José Luis Borau, and led by box-office star José Luis López Vázquez as the spinster protagonist. And second, because this reinterpretation arrives backed not only by Netflix, but also by the ever‑in‑demand creative duo Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo.
These filmmakers – who are preparing the release of La bola negra – entrusted Fernando González Molina with taking the reins of the new My Dearest Señorita, a project aimed at a young audience who will likely never see the original. The Navarrese filmmaker (who, alongside a successful career in film and television, also made the gay-themed documentary The Best Day of My Life [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) relocates the first part of the story to his native Pamplona – Armiñán and Borau set theirs in Galicia – and weaves in elements drawn from his own experience as a member of the LGBTQI+ community.
It is precisely the letter I (for intersexuality) in the community’s acronym that takes centre stage here, thanks to the debut screenplay by trans writer Alana S. Portero (don’t miss her autobiographical novel La mala costumbre). Yet it is precisely in the plot – overly explanatory, repetitive and packed with declarations – that this film stumbles, despite embracing the party-like energy of other works produced by Los Javis.
Whereas the 1972 film cast a cisgender actor in the lead role, this new version places an intersex performer as the lead actress: newcomer Elisabeth Martínez, supported by established names such as Paco León, Anna Castillo and recent Goya winner Nagore Aranburu.
The story introduces Adela, a young woman in her twenties and the only child of a conservative couple in a provincial town. She spends her afternoons in the family’s antique shop, shaped by her mother’s overprotectiveness and silence about her intersexuality, for which she is socially discriminated against. Her friendship with a gay priest, the return of a friend from London, and the arrival of a lively lesbian physiotherapist disrupt Adela’s routine, prompting her to embark on a journey of self-discovery from Pamplona to Madrid, where she can finally be the person she wants to be.
Seasoned with nods to Almodóvar’s work and cameos from LGBTQI+ icons such as musician Rodrigo Cuevas, singer La Prohibida, and Alana S. Portero herself, My Dearest Señorita stands proudly as an anthem to self-love, the essential foundation for loving oneself as one truly is. It tells a love story that once struggled to fit within the rigid labels of a Spain that, from the 21st century onwards, began to embrace its multicoloured diversity.
My Dearest Señorita is produced by Suma Content for Netflix, where it will premiere on 1 May, following its theatrical release in Spain on 17 April.
(Translated from Spanish)
