Mubi continues to impress with its original films (such as last year’s “The Substance” and this year’s “History of Sound,” and the criminally overlooked “Lurker”) as well as its streaming platform. The latter of which gave us Cooper Raiff’s excellent family drama “Hal & Harper” (which debuted in June) and now this even more ambitious 10-part affair from award-winning filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen.
Sorogoyen is the Spanish director of 2022’s intense, unsettling “The Beasts” amongst other edgy works, but in “The New Years,” he turns his candid eye toward a more essential, stripped-down human story. This time, the focus is on the decade-spanning, on-again/off-again relationship between the mercurial, magnetic Ana (Iria del Río) who is bopping her way through jobs and life, and the structure-bound, less spontaneous but still game Óscar (Francesco Carril), a medical internist.
Sorgogyen sets each episode on New Year’s Eve; a day that is memorable to each since Ana was born on New Year’s Day and Óscar on New Year’s Eve.
The responsibility for this story not be a disjointed, contrived mess lands on del Río and Carril, who need to express both internally and externally the subtle or major changes they’ve experienced over the past year, as well as on the writing and dialogue. If any of it sounds phony, it’s over. On the acting front, you entirely believe that del Rio and Carril are a real couple tangled up in an intense, imperfect relationship. Each shows a vulnerability that many actors can’t replicate. “The New Years” invites audiences to be their bystanders, privy to the couple’s most intimate times (the series is quite realistic but not shy when it comes to depicting graphic lovemaking, particularly in earlier episodes). On the writing front, the screenplay organically makes the time gaps fluid and natural, a tricky conceit to pull off. The dialogue never feels like we’re getting fed updates on what life has thrown at the two on those other 363 days of the year. Instead, we sift through hints about the stuff they’re grappling with: grief, scornful customers, a bad drug trip at a nightclub, exes and current lovers, friends in need and in trouble, new jobs and parents, etc. The first episode finds Ana and Óscar stumbling into each other in 2015 and fans out from there, taking both away from their homebase near Madrid and off to Lyon and Berlin. Just like first, tentative impressions you have in a relationship, “The New Years” grows and matures and molds into something more meaningful and gracious. It also joins Richard Linklater’s classic “Before Trilogy” and even the play “Same Time, Next Year” in showing how we deal with the advent of time while fate and circumstance are handing us joys and hardships. It’s one of the most effective and affecting series I’ve experienced in some time, and is a creative triumph for all involved.
‘THE NEW YEARS’
4 stars out of 4
Starring: Iria del Río, Francesco Carril
Creator/director: Rodrigo Sorogoyen
When & where: 10 episodes; first two episodes available Dec. 3, with one additional episode available weekly thereafter at mubi.com.