Las brujas de Zugarramurdi
Director: Álex de la Iglesia
Writer: Jorge Guerricaechevarría, Álex de la Iglesia
Cast: Hugo Silva, Mario Casas, Terele Pávez, Carolina Bang, Carmen Maura, Gabriel Ángel Delgado
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
José (Hugo Silva) was recently divorced and is in the middle of a custody battle with his wife. It really doesn’t help that he takes his son (Gabriel Ángel Delgado) with him on a robbery that he planned together with some guys, among them Antonio (Mario Casas). But things go wrong and the guys find themselves on the run. Their flight leads them directly into a coven of not particularly well-meaning witches.

Witching & Bitching starts out funny but the longer it went on, the more difficulty I had with its blatant misogyny. In the end I was too horrified to really enjoy it.

[SPOILERS]

Before we saw the film at the /slash, the festival director warned us in his introduction that it would not be the most women-friendly film, probably because de la Iglesia went through a divorce himself right before shooting this. I was glad that I got this warning because of all the misogynistic witch movies, this has got to be one of the worst in that regard.

Not only does any community of women become suspect in this film, they get to say feminist things – which are twisted in an insidious way so as to become evil. They take the Venus of Willendorf, one of the most positive representations of feminity, and make her a man-eating monster. Of course, they are all openly and aggressively sexual, to further reinforce the stereotype that a sexually active woman is an evil one.

But probably the worst thing was in what happened to Eva (Carolina Bang): she is one of the witches but she falls in love with José. Since she doesn’t want to eat José anymore, she becomes an outcast of her family. José finds her locked up, but only frees her after she begs him that she will renounce her witchhood (which she seemed to enjoy a lot until then) to be with him because she loves him so. The movie ends with Eva dressed like a soccer mom as José’s date at a school recital of his son. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie that clearer relegates women to “their place”.

With all of that, I couldn’t really enjoy the humor anymore. Which is a pity because there were some good jokes there. But if you first have to wade through piles and piles of misogynistic crap, those good jokes really don’t save anything.

Summarizing: Only watch the robbery in the beginning, then turn the entire thing off.