by Grand Prix at Séries Mania 2025 and available on Arte.TV, the Spanish mini-series “Querer” dissects with an frozen sobriety the flight of a mother victim of domestic violence.
A sober and powerful work
It is a real slap. In a deliberate coldness – of the image as of the staging – and a total absence of music, Querre builds his story on the oppressive silence of an implosion family.
Miren, interpreted by Nagore Aranburu, has just filed a complaint at the police station accompanied by his lawyer. After 30 years of marriage and two children, she decided to leave the marital home and denounce her husband for marital rape.
The following scene sums up everything: Miren is about to leave, but she is prepared for a steak for her husband returned earlier than expected. Then her body freezes, her face is tightened. Anxiety embraces it. These are 30 years of fear crystallized in seconds before the taxi flight. And four episodes that structure this way of the cross (separation, too many justifications, judgment … unbearable before reconstruction) with clinical rigor.
Director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa and her co-creators opt for a story stretched from start to finish where every detail-a door that slaps, the sound of the steps in the next room-becomes signifier. This economy of means reveals the brutality of the unsaid and invisible violence, considered harmless. Because nothing is shown of the violence imposed by Iñigo (Pedro Casablanc), her husband. The final trial, an episode where each silence is a thickness to be cut with a knife, exposes the mechanics of the conjugal grip.
Nicolás de Assas / Movistar Plus+
Unanimous criticism
With an average press note of 4.4/5 on Allociné bringing together 11 press titles, Querre arouses exceptional critical membership. For Télérama, it's “A shock mini-series, which lets off, sad but not without hope“. She greets”The first stammerings of reconstruction of her heroine“. The point insists on its restraint:”remarkably written […] Without effects, where nothing is supported, but whose plot is followed by a throat ball“. The inrockuptibles underline the”finesse of her study and the clarity of her words“.
Marie Claire promises that the series you “will haunt a long“, while Télé 7 Jours rents”Relentless accuracy“Faced with the theme of marital rape. Télé Loisirs takes up the words of the creator Eduard Sola:”I realize that this series can change the world“. Le Figaro Magazine underlines the”daring“The lack of music that intensifies emotions. Finally, the Parisian praises”The great comedians“, Particularly Nagore Aranburu. It is true that his silence is incredibly expressive.
YouTube screenshot
Why will Querer haunt you
Beyond his technical mastery, Querer imposes his emergency by his subject. The series precisely dismantles the mechanisms of patriarchal violence, notably through the character of Airor (Miguel Bernardeau), the eldest son who unconsciously reproduces the paternal scheme. We are also the witnesses of a Miren who undergoes a real downgrading.
Social to start. Forbidden to work during her marriage, she must now support her needs alone. But she is also downgraded within the family. She becomes a bad mother for denouncing her husband's actions. A beautiful demonstration of the way in which the grip is perpetuated by the collective denial.
Nicolás de Assas / Movistar Plus+
If the series escaped you during its broadcast on Arte, catch up with this necessary masterpiece on the platform of the Arte.TV. Carried by the staggering performance of Nagore Aranburu, this immersion in an apparently ordinary family will open your eyes to the such important themes of marital rapes, submission and isolation, avoiding all miserabilism to tend towards a form of Catharsis.
These subjects which are often the subject of an unhealthy voyeurism according to the various judicial affairs which make the front page of the news are addressed here from another angle. Or how the series goes beyond fiction to become a consciousness tool.
