Or ‘Money Heist’ in English. I know, hard to imagine a more tautological translation (sic) of the original title. But we’ll get back to clichés later. After watching the heist movie of the decade (Widows) and getting nagged by literally everyone, from friends to students, raving about ‘La Casa de Papel’ for months, I finally gave in. Why wait so long you ask? Well, ‘Game of Thrones’ (1 episode and 5 6 4 7 3 9 3 9 5 7 5 7 5 2 indistinguishable characters raised multiple red flags despite a late nude scene) and ‘Breaking Bad’ (a season and a half in, bored to death, I asked a friend if the thrilling bit he was talking about was really that chemistry teacher running a meth lab), two mainstream favorites, weren’t exactly my cup of tea, so I started growing a little suspicious of massive crowdpleasers. This one is a no-brainer though, even for skeptics like me.
Criminal mastermind El Profesor (Alvaro Morte) has decided to become a Robin Hood of sorts, in other words a noble rebel or a resistant in the same vein as his grandfather who used to sing Bella Ciao while fighting fascism in Italy. Except this time we’re not exactly sure what the resistants’ struggle is all about. Capitalism? The system that has turned El Profesor’s accomplices into convicted felons? Is it just some sort of delusion of grandeur? Maybe all of the above. No matter what his true motives are, El Profesor trains and subsequently sends his eclectic – and frankly odd – gang into the Royal Mint of Spain (Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre, hence the title ‘The House of Paper’) to carry out the robbery of the century – without shedding a single drop of blood or technically stealing anyone’s money. They have two things in common: they have nothing left to lose and each of them has a particular skill set justifying their selection. Tokio (Ursula Corberó, the token hottie doubling up as the voice-over narrator), her boyfriend/gigolo Rio (Miguel Herrán, Henri Laaksonen lookalike and customary good guy who has no reason to be involved other than being tricked into helping the hostages or making a deal with the powers that be), Berlin (Pedro Alonso, the creepy preacher-like psycho running the show on site), Nairobi (Alba Flores, not as fierce as she seems, probably the most engaging of the bunch), Denver (Jaime Menéndez, the proverbial good-hearted idiot who wouldn’t be able to perform the tiniest smart thing to save his life), his dad Moscú (Paco Tous, we almost forget he’s supposed to be a criminal in the course of the show) Helsinki and Oslo (Darko Peric and Radko Dragic, the archetypal good giants whose Serbian origins are responsible for their broken Spanish and their battlefield brotherhood – two heavily armed upgrades on Lennie Small if you will) form an unlikely team that is reminiscent of the drilling crew put together by Bruce Willis in Armageddon to save the planet from an asteroid. Only Stockholm seems to be missing from this list of code names but I guess the joke would have been slightly too obvious in a hostage situation… No decent writer would fall for such bad taste, right?
You might have noticed my using the words ‘token’, ‘customary’, ‘proverbial’ and ‘archetypal’. This show’s use of devices that have been exploited ad nauseam by the heist genre could have been its fatal flaw and yet it is its greatest strength. Indeed, Alex Pina (the show’s creator) seems to be fully aware of the fact that he’s been using a second-hand bag of tricks. Berlin and Tokio’s allusions to hackneyed horror movie clichés when addressing Arturo Román and Mónica Gaztambide (Enrique Arce and Esther Acebo, two of the 67 hostages) can hardly be a coincidence. And since El Profesor seems to be a movie buff too, his ability to shrug off all the authorities’ textbook moves is a redeeming quality in itself.
Last but not least, a hidden gem lurks in the vicinity of the main action. Raquel Murillo (Itziar Ituño), the officer in charge of the case, is so desperately human that she doesn’t seem entirely believable as a character (and she should definitely be out of a job). She was repeatedly assaulted by her ex-husband who happens to be one of her colleagues, no one believes her including her mother and daughter, she was instrumental in another colleague’s cheating on his wife, her mother suffers from dementia and has to write every basic piece of information including where she lives on post-it notes, the whole nine yards. Not many fully functioning human beings would be able to cope with such a comprehensive list of blemishes. Regardless of the ones I’m not disclosing in this review to avoid unnecessary spoilers. All these personal matters end up permeating her job environment, therefore making her extremely incompetent and incredibly likeable at first, unbelievably annoying then, and mostly entertaining on the whole. This brings some balance to the plot, as none of the other law enforcement officers – with the notable exception of Angel (Fernando Soto) – seem to be worth warming up to. Once again, the show manages to successfully turn a seemingly serious weakness into a crucial feature (although feminists and the Spanish police might beg to differ).
I’ll end this with one last stereotypical catch phrase. There’s much more to ‘La Casa de Papel’ than meets the eye. Yes, this show is about so much more than rebellious losers who don’t even know each other’s real names trying to lay their hands on 2.4 billion euros. It’s about their true personal motives since they don’t have a clue what El Profesor’s are. It’s about human (robbers and hostages alike) relationships in confinement. Everyone gets tested. Good, evil, love, leadership, blood, gender, rational thinking, passion, democracy, rules, religion, money as a paper fiction. Everything gets challenged. So now that Christmas is (finally) over, don’t be a Grinch, turn on Netflix and watch the most unrelentingly riveting show since Prison Break’s first season thirteen years ago (too bad they’re about to make the same mistake as the aforementioned show by coming up with a third season about the aftermath of the heist/break). Make sure the floor beneath you is soft because you’ll see that the edge of your seat won’t seem quite close enough to the screen at times. You might also want to warn your neighbors who are trying to enjoy a good old lie-in next door because I dare you not to scream at your screen from time to time. Oh and I don’t think I’d be crossing the Rubicon of human decency if I asked you to watch this show in its (subtitled) Spanish original version. Otherwise you’ll miss an opportunity to tell your friends about the cast’s truly brilliant acting as well as fail to learn some very colorful ways of expressing yourself in Spanish. Dubbing shouldn’t even exist, joder!
P.S. Just let me know who you’re rooting for at the end, the robbers or the police. I still haven’t figured it out. That’s the usual problem with non-Manichaean shows. In the meantime, I’m going to bed. Binge watching 22 episodes (new personal best) in the span of three days is almost as exhausting as a Christmas family dinner.
Picture: Moritz Barcelona, Festival de Cinema de Sitges 2018, 5 October 2018, Licensed under the Wikimedia Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License. Originally published on Flickr https://flickr.com/photos/54838423@N07/31305141408
Pardon my French 