En su papel protagonist as Vicente en Maspalomas (Aitor Arregi y José María Goenaga, 2025), José Ramón Soroiz appears disoriented in the first seconds of the film in the middle of what at first appears to be a desert. Shortly after, we realize that we are entering the dunes on the beach in the tourist area of Maspalomas, Gran Canaria, where we will first witness a scene of homosexual group sex, and then meet another man who is visibly younger than him.
And it is because the character of Soroiz is a man over 70 years old. While homosexual sex scenes are not commonplace in domestic cinema, at least one of the participants was what we used to call the third generation.
Born in the early years, Vicente is immersed in the process of discovery as a teenager. After spending a lifetime hiding his sexual orientation in a traditional marriage where old and rigid couples dictated, at an indeterminate moment in his later years he decides to separate from his wife and leave everything behind until finally live from sexual liberation in Gran Canaria.
Ah, the disorientation that appeared in Soroize at the beginning of the film and that we noticed earlier. Oh yes, the representation of the Canarian surroundings as a bright paradise landscape has also finally been achieved. Vicente is in the process of discovering and accepting, after decades of suppressing his desires and his true identity.
Too bad for him, because when he ends up living the “great life” he’s always dreamed of, he suffered a stroke while having full sex with two men. Shortly afterwards, at the request of his hija de tour, he was transferred to his native San Sebastián. They will enter the geriatric, where they will again tend to turn around to place themselves in that apollillado armory that they loved to climb into.
On the edge of the wall, especially at the beginning, on the idyllic island, but also in the center of Donostiarra, we will witness a series of scenes in which sex is depicted with absolute rawness. The body we see in the full process of discovery is that of an elderly person, yes, but the vital stage is very far from being “final” or “occasional” such as we are used to relating to old age, or indeed to despair.
In Arregi y Goenaga I say “sexual love” come into direct conflict with the kind of life old people are supposed to care for. Let your Vincent come up with the idea of having sex with another older man who is looking for him. We see it when every day a person enters Maspalomas, minutes before a cardiovascular accident, when he turns his beak at the sight of a person over fifty that he too is hooked.
Coincide la apuesta de Maspalomas en los Goya con otra cinta que aborda, a su manera particular, la misma temática. Se trata de Sexo a los 70, nominada en la categoría de mejor cortometraje de ficción. Su directora, la también actriz Vanesa Romero (Aquí no hay quien viva, La que se avecina) cayó en la cuenta a raíz de una conversación telefónica con su madre de que todavía existía un rechazo hacia las relaciones sexuales de los más mayores.
“En realidad —cuenta la realizadora a El Cultural— el fuerte tabú que existe en cuanto al sexo en la tercera edad es una forma más de edadismo. Los apartamos de la vida, de los fenómenos vitales de los que los demás formamos parte, como es el sexo. No admitimos que ellos puedan ‘follar’ porque consideramos que no están tan vivos como nosotros”.
Sexo a los 70 narra la historia de Marga (Mamen García), una mujer viuda de 70 años a quien su nieta anima a tener una cita a ciegas con un hombre de su edad que ha encontrado en Tinder. “Son dos generaciones antagónicas, la desinhibición total de los Z frente al recato y las reticencias de aquella otra generación”.
Tras el fallecimiento de su marido, la mujer se ha sumido en un abatimiento en el que parece que ha claudicado de todo lo relacionado con vivir. “Ella, digamos, está triste, está aburrida, está hastiada de la vida. Su vida deja de tener sentido tras la muerte de su marido. Es víctima de todo ese tipo de reparos antiguos, de fidelidades que van más allá de la muerte de la pareja. Es algo que, en nuestro proceso de investigación y entrevistas a ancianas, nos hemos dado cuenta de que es muy habitual”.
De nuevo, como ocurre en MaspalomasMarga is also a process of (re)discovery. “You have to realize that life wasn’t until the 1970s. Life ends when you allow yourself to be admired. Desire is not fleeting. It evolves but does not remain in a perishable state. This film is an attempt to normalize things that we know are happening before we start filming. The intention is to transform it as it is: something perfectly natural”.
Finally, Marga has dinner with Agapito (Fernando Colomo). But when, on the advice of your niece, the quote continues in the woman’s house, a predictable or unexpected problem arises: a man, even an elderly one, has an episode of erectile dysfunction. “Life is what it is and your body changes so you have to accept that too. It was also necessary to reflect on the screen that the body is not the same as before and does not function the same, but of course this can be continued by using and exploring other ways to achieve this.’
The director also understands that this reflection is born from the restlessness of those who know that one day old age will drag them and make use of what they usually take from it. A plan similar to the proposal of the two filmmakers who sign Maspalomas. Goenaga said on the line at the film’s launch in San Sebastian: “It took me a lot to come out of the closet, and it’s dramatic that after everything that this step does, I’m coming back to this ending at the end of my life. Let’s tell this story, but the audience feels repulsed either way.”
Arregi, Goenaga and Romero agree on this particular interest in subsequent recovery of the vital pathway. Perhaps ultimately this liberating ambition comes from creators looking to their own futures with the hope that Envejecer does not mean dejar de vivir.
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