David Farnor | On 08, Nov 2021

Director Nacho Álvarez
Cast: Ingrid García Johnson, Verónica Echegui, Fernando Guallar, Pedro Casablanc, Fernando Tejero, Natalia Millán
Certificate: TBC
Where to watch My Heart Goes Boom! online in the UK: Raindance 2021

This film is streaming at the 2021 Raindance Film Festival. For more information on what’s playing online at the festival and how it works, click here.

ABBA, Frankie Valli and Four Seasons, The Proclaimers. You’re not a music legend until you’ve had a jukebox musical made from your songs. Now, Raffaella Carrà joins the club with this absolutely joyous celebration of music and dance.

Ingrid García Johnson stars as Maria, a young woman we meet as she leaves her fiance at the altar. Heading back to her home country of Spain, she gets work as an air hostess, where she happens to cross paths with TV producer Pablo (Fernando Guallar). A meet-cute involving a suitcase leads to another slightly-less-meet-cute with director Chimo (Fernando Tejero), who spies her dancing talents and turns her into a TV dancer. At the same time, though, censors are determined to keep the conservative values of Francoist Spain alive, and what ensues is a clash between the counter-cultural outburst of La Movida and the outgoing Spanish dictator.

Maria and Pablo are caught between those two forces, with artistic freedom, romance and her professional dreams all on the line. But while that might sound serious, My Heart Goes Boom! more than lives up to its exclamation mark, keeping things light and effervescent – the plot has enough substance to make its playlist coherent, but without getting bogged down in the details. It’s a theatrical tale, but not a melodramatic one.

Keeping this all balanced is Uruguayan filmmaker Nacho Álvarez, who, incredibly, is making his feature debut with confidence, wit and style – some meta-camerawork involving screens within screens are at once amusing in their own right and a way to shine a spotlight on the scene-stealing Verónica Echegui as Maria’s friend, Amparo.

The result is an “explota” of bright colours, vibrant costumes and entertaining choreography, powered by the greatest hits of Raffaella Carrà – including such gems as Adios Amigo (which features the inspired rhyming couplet of “Adiós amigo, goodbye my friend/ Ciao, ciao amigo, arriverderci, auf wiedersehen”). The cast play it like a Eurovision music video, earnest and playful in equal measure. The result is Italy and Spain’s answer to Mamma Mia! – a feel-good delight that’s impossible to resist.

 

My Heart Goes Boom! is available to rent on Curzon Home Cinema until 11.59pm on 8th November

Add to Watchlist