IF I WERE RICH/ SI YO FUERO RICO

Spain, 2019, 98 minutes, Colour.

Alex Garcia, Alexandra Jimenez, Jordi Sanchez, Adrian Lastrop, Diego Martin, Franky Martin.

Directed by Alvaro Fernandez Armero.

This is a broad Spanish comedy, the remake of a French film, Si j’etais riche, which was led by strong cast of Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.

This is one of those comedies where audiences are expected to sit back, enjoy the characters and the sometimes crazy situations which they have created, humour with an ambiguous moral about being rich and what one does with one’s fortune.

The Spanish settings are colourful, the Spanish town and homes, a supermarket, golf courses, clubs and restaurants and, especially the beach and the surf.

The central character is Santi who has lost his job, is in process of a divorce from his wife even though he is devoted to her. They have meetings to discuss dividing of the house and property, he wanting to keep his old van, and the promising to live in the same house until it was sold.

Then, one of those strange occasions, an old lady observing him and his difficulties urging him to buy a lottery ticket. He wins.

And, the rest of the film is about consequences, the bank manager literally pursuing him to get his custom to invest the money, the issue of dividing his property with his about to be divorced wife, keeping it a secret. Then the encounter with the cranky policewoman who was previously moved him on from sleeping in his van, but becoming very deferential she hears he is one the lottery.

Santi has two close friends, Marcos and his family, and the rather large Pedro, all enjoying surfing together. He uses some of the money to get Marcos a large car (with a disastrous drive and its going over a cliff into the ocean), arranging for Pedro to be the image for sunglasses commercials. In the meantime, he is able to live something of the high life, an Armani suit, more clothes, a fashionable room in a hotel, meals out (having to learn what decanter wine means)… All comic situations and, the danger of encountering his friends while his wearing the suit or other situations which could give the game away.

In the meantime, his wife has taken up with an entrepreneur who was at school with the men, and very large at the time but has slimmed down and is a champion surfer, setting up a supermarket, employing Santi’s wife, and, at her wish, giving him jobs including store stacking.

The newcomer is also skilled at surfing so Santi invites Spain’s top surfer to visit him and to be seen with him!

So, the audience enjoys seeing what Santi makes of his wealth, keeping it a secret, all the devices to cover his wealth and appear normally poor, but all the time in love with his wife – moving towards a climax where the friends feel their life has been ruined (though one reconciles with his wife and she is pregnant again and the fat man finds a fan who likes his advertisements and has many hits on his page). The unmasking of the entrepreneur – and his finally returning. Fat again.

Frantic climax at the airport with Santi leaving and his wife coming to reconcile – and, of course, his buying the supermarket and giving it to his wife to manage.

And, the moral of the story, what would we do if we won the lottery!