El alquimista impaciente is a Spanish-Argentinian co-production made in 2002 and based on the crime novel of the same title by Lorenzo Silva (2000). Silva’s novel is the second instalment of his so-called ‘Bevilacqua series’, starring Sergeant Ruben ‘Vila’ Bevilacqua, a criminal investigator at the Guardia Civil (Spain’s paramilitary national police force) and his female assistant Virginia Chamorro. The novel was granted the Nadal Award, arguably one of the most prestigious literary prize in Spain, in 2000 and was the first work of Silva to be brought to the big screen.
The film adaptation was in the hands of Patricia Ferreira (b. unknown), who wrote and directed the film in collaboration with the scriptwriter Enrique Jiménez. Ferreira is…show more content… On the one hand, the film displays few recurrent elements of the genre such as a jazzy melancholic music, a lighting style of blue tones and iconography locations such as luxury mansions, a squalid road motel, empty landscapes outside the city, a pseudo posh nightclub. Moreover, there are also some recognisable characters of a classical crime story, from the investigator couple and the chief police officer to diluted versions of the “bad guys” and the femme fatale and the narration includes the usual explicative voice over of the investigator along with a not very clear flashback structure. However, on the other hand, both the novel and the film represent a particular interpretation of the police investigation drama adopting a more realistic approach within the context of contemporary Spain. For instance, the protagonist couple are not heroic investigators or traumatised cops but rather quite ordinary public servants leading a boring, solitary life (Bevilacqua spent his free time painting toy soldiers at home while Chamorro does the homework for taking a degree in astronomy). Although a sexual tension/attraction between them, particularly from Bevilacqua’s perspective, is manifested in some scenes, the working environment determines to great extent their relationship strongly determining their few, and generally
