“There are young people who are different than mine – wrote screenwriter Leonardo Martín – but I wanted to tell the story of those who get bored, those who don’t know what to do, who are alone. I wanted to raise the problem of youth without problems.” The best aspect of Los chicos is its capacity to transmit a sense of defeat that ranges from mild references to the civil war to the final shot in which the illusions of a Sunday evening dissolve in the rain. Through these chiaroscuro effects, or the deforming mirrors in the amusement park, Ferreri’s second feature film represents a reflection of contemporary Spanish society much more credible than what the majority of cinema from that era portrays, though it does not reach the style of El pisito or El cochecito.

Esteve Riambau, in Marco Ferreri. Il cinema e i film, Stefania Parigi ed., Venezia, Marsilio, 1995