Caged Wings Review: Mi soledad tiene alas or My Loneliness Has Wings is a Spanish drama movie that marks Mario Casas’ directorial debut as his vision leads the film’s screenplay alongside Déborah François, which then posits his brother Oscar Casas, Candela González and Farid Bechara at the centre of a naturalistic narrative set in the outskirts of Barcelona. With a runtime of 1 hour and 42 minutes, the movie premiered on Netflix on January 19, 2024, following its Spanish theatrical release in 2023, and is rated ‘A’.
Caged Wings Plot: Dan is a budding street artist who lives with his grandmother, the only supposed member of his family left behind. Keeping his innate artistic expression locked inside, he stays above water by engaging in small-scale heists with his friends. One day, a robbery attempt fails severely, and Dan and his buddies have no choice but to flee, while he also deals with the emotionally abusive return of his criminal father from the prison.
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Mi soledad tiene alas Review Contains No Spoilers
Caged Wings Review / My Loneliness Has Wings Review
Thematically fuelling its narrative with elements of the Quinqui cinema genre that draws upon humble delinquency aspects of the underclass juvenile street life, Mario Casas’ novel directorial venture reeks of pure desperation to fit in the aesthetic box of artsy validation. Right from when one starts watching the film, to the moment it finally wraps up its imitative and unoriginal character arcs and action, Caged Wings tirelessly harks back to the overdone bits of the street-centred lives of youngsters caught in a toxic chain of criminality and domestic abuse (not limited to physical).
Despite the heartfelt and gut-wrenching basic foundational roots of its main character’s vicious life cycle, the movie’s writing does the bare minimum to lift off the ground with affecting turns that would make you care enough for its main trio. From the word go, the Spanish film merely hopes to unimaginatively take copious notes from a movie genre that has long gone out of style when it comes to the era it was birthed in.
Regardless of this farewell, many international directors and writers have continued to build on similar tropes corresponding to the genre without their results ever being formally categorised as Quinqui cinema. However, in Casas’ case, the dull resurgence of the thematic inspiration is so worn out and stale that each moment of the film reeks with hackneyed deja vu feels, making you feel as if you’ve watched this particular film a thousand times before. As soon as the first few moments sink in for you to realise what the plot is about, you’re automatically able to perceive beforehand what’s about to unfold next.
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The same-old ideas of a friend circle falling apart, with at least two of these members falling for each other after sticking it out together for survival, upon their temporary escape from their “cages”. At this point, these revelations can’t even be labelled as spoilers because that’s how familiar this run of the mill concept is.
From time to time, Mario’s camera captures some moving moments, but it all falls prey to his overall attempts at producing a mere carbon copy of older visual stories. No active progression goes into shaping the main characters’ lives, which not only results in their fictional settings being envisioned as cages restricting them, but also renders the material plot of the story a big enclosure that confines both the character growth as well as the plot development.
Óscar Casas and Candela González try their best to level with the limiting plot that gets trapped inside its own desperation to churn out a pretentiously artistic product that only seeks to convey its symbolism through on the nose and redundant bird imageries sprinkled here and there in surplus. The streets are meant to come alive and take shape as a character in themselves in such movies, but the mechanical product so released turns out to be a mere soulless piece that has nothing to say for itself, only seeks to emulate un-freshness.
Caged Wings Netflix Movie: Final Thoughts
My Loneliness Has Wings is almost like a product worked out in a lab that hopes to bait the audience into watching it with its pretentious art film-likeness. Unfortunately, that’s all I could see while watching this movie, but it’s not to say that My Loneliness Has Wings was completely abhorrent. However, what’s the point of such a film that doesn’t use its inspirations as a shooting pad to attain a bigger meaning either? With so many films of the type on OTT already, I’m not sure why this one should be your first pick for the weekend, unless the actors have an emotional hold over you.
Caged Wings movie is now streaming on Netflix.
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Your summary says it all. Sorry Mario. Better luck next time.