It is more than possible that the public knows the plot of The body on fire. On May 4, 2017, it was reported that a car was on fire near the Foix reservoir (Alt Penedès). Responding agents find a charred corpse in the trunk, unrecognizable, which can be identified by the serial number of the titanium prosthesis he was wearing on his back after a recent operation. It is Pedro Rodríguez, a suspended agent of the Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona, ??and the investigation by the Mossos d’Esquadra does not take long to opt for two suspects: Rosa Peral, the victim’s partner, and Albert López, her lover, also members of the same police force as the murdered man.
The only way to ignore the so-called Crime of the Urban Guard, at least in Catalonia, was to have remained in a cave while the police investigation and subsequent trial were carried out, which received extensive media coverage, or Solo tú was published. You will have me from Toni Muñoz, who had worked on the case from La Vanguardia and had dealt with Rosa Peral before the murder, or the broadcast of the four-episode special of Crims, which just made the murder a milestone in Catalan black chronicle, of the cultural imaginary and who channeled the conversation around him.
Therefore, for the murder to be adapted to the fictional format, taking into account the success of true crime on television and its popularity, it was a matter of time. And, in the same way that this decision was inevitable, so was the formulation of the following question: What can this new vision of crime contribute to the local public so familiar with the murder of Pedro Rodríguez? The short answer is that The Body on Fire, which premieres on Netflix on Friday, is not clear, even in the case of a complete product that avoids morbidity.
Úrsula Corberó as Rosa Peral, Quim Gutiérrez as Albert López and José Manuel Poga as Pedro Rodríguez lead a calm thriller, which can be seen as a recreation of the crime rather than a reinterpretation of the facts or a tool to go beyond the evidence presented at trial. Screenwriter Laura Sarmiento and director Jorge Torregrossa, who made a great team in Intimacy, don’t even get into the torrid game that the title implies.
Rosa Peral was able to maintain sexual affective relationships with three different men at the same time, the case could paint her as a manipulative femme fatale and the crime cannot be separated from the dependency between Peral and López, but the camera does not seek to represent that toxic passion on screen with the bodies of Corberó and Gutiérrez: they perform sex scenes in front of the cameras, but these operate as witnesses to some events, keeping a distance.
This, which could be understood as commendable, soon proves to be a slab. The story is based on two narrative lines (the events after the murder and the reconstruction of the previous months) but without using the structure to structure its own discourse. One could delve into the portrait of Peral, still to this day a disconcerting being for opting for the most lethal way to get out of a relationship; the number of disturbed and aggressive beings in the police forces could be denounced, taking into account the protagonists of the story; You could be interested in the keel essence that Peral and López exhibited in real life, even having chosen a much more luxurious house than the murderer’s, or you could look for tension in each and every one of the character dynamics, since you don’t none is saved.
An episode could even be dedicated to the ex-wife of the victim, which could present a very interesting angle on the tragedy, when he was abandoned by another and that this same woman liquidated the father of his son. But no, El cuerpo en llamas prefers to be an orthodox chronicle whose only outbursts are the reading of text messages (the actors speak to the camera) and the appearance of dissonant songs to extol the drama, and which clashes head-on with the compositions. by Aitor Etxebarria, possibly the greatest success of the production.
The miniseries cannot be criticized for not being a decent product. Sarmiento and Torregrossa have a craft and in some sequences they know how to elevate their slow drama. But, perhaps fascinated by the material or cautious by the lack of temporal and geographical distance, they forget to develop their own voice, to go further, offering a monotonous story with flatter characters than would be appropriate, who we do not know better. after these eight episodes.
