Spanish Film Festival (4) - Barrie Pattison is underwhelmed by the domestic hit CHAMPIONS (Javier Fesser)

Javier Fesser’s Campeones/ Champions is a massive hit in Spain. It opened the Spanish Film Festival here and the audience I saw it with gave it spontaneous applause - how often does that happen? Took me a while to understand why I was uncomfortable with it.

The plot has the admirable Javier Gutiérrez (La Isla minima, Plan de fuga) second coach to a Spanish ACB's champion basketball team. During the match he gets into a shoving match with chief coach Daniel Freire (Sex and Lucía) and is sent off. His marriage to the winning Athenea Mata is on the rocks and his mother is impatient about him occupying her spare bed so Gutiérrez empties the bottle in a bar and, when pulled over, he rear ends the police car. In the cells, a lawyer he’s never seen shows up, not to to have him released but to handle his appearance before the lady judge he doesn’t know how to address. He’s given a driving ban and three months either in the slammer or community service. 

Gutiérrez thinks he’s hard done by but the lawyer tells him to shut up and accept his court appointed punishment which turns out to be coaching “Los Amigos,” a mentally impaired basketball team from a rundown Cultural Service operated by elderly Juan Margallo, whose career goes back to Spirit of the Beehive. He turns out to be the nephew of the judge.

Confronting the result of child birth accidents taps into Gutiérrez’ own fears about becoming a father but a visit to the judge lets him know he’s getting off lightly. Comic scenes of them not getting the idea that they have to wear team colours or run in a line. This is increasingly the way as with the bus that they are thrown off after complaints by the other passengers. The audience was falling about while I became uncomfortable with the use of genuine cases being put up as ridiculous if heartwarming.

The formulaic body of the film has the players (his mum slaps Gutiérrez for saying “retards”) turn out to be winning and funny and he somewhat implausibly shapes them into a unit he takes to the Paralympic national league's competition finals. The cast actually do basketball stunts.

Of course Gutiérrez’ marital and personality problems are solved by his contact with the team. The finale does ring. He hasn’t realised that he achieved his aim until he sees the evidence all around him among slow mo of falling paper guns. However even structurally I find the piece flawed. Roberto Chinchilla, the player from the Paralympics who lost his medal in a cheating scandal has a more interesting story than our hero. Maybe that’s why his part is so fragmentary. The film is otherwise generally technically accomplished.

Projects like this need careful judgement. Think the Stanley Kramer/John Cassavetes’ A Child is Waiting. Playing it for cheap shot comedy is suspect to say the least. Can’t blame the cast who seem to have enjoyed themselves in their first contact with the movies.