A nice daily chronicle that gave rise to the so-called 'Madrid comedy'. A way of making very fresh and low-budget films that would echo the famous "Movida Madrileña" . Tigres de papel (1977) contains effective but uninteresting dialogues in which the actors interpret with pure and slight aplomb for a key film in the cinema of the transition. During Spain's general elections of June 1977, Carmen (Carmen Maura) and Juan (Joaquín Hinojosa) are a divorced couple, parents of a 14-year-old son; despite their circumstances they maintain a very close relationship. Things are made more complicated by the appearance of an anarchist neighbor (Emma Cohen), with Carmen who has returned to live with her parents and Alberto (Miguel Arribas) who alternately occupies the marital home with Maria (Concha Gregori) and he is interested in Carmen.
In the film, the sentimental and ideological conflicts of young couples are intertwined in the maelstrom of a Spain in transition that celebrates its first legislative elections. That's why the relationships of some peculiar characters during the time of the "Spanish Transition" are the main axis of this comedy by Fernando Colomo. Being one of the most characteristic films at the time, which also created a new type of comedy, the so-called Comedia Madrileña. Shot and set during the first legislative elections of the spring of 1977, developing scenes in a political environment, such as during a meeting in Villaverde Alto, talking about the Third Spanish Republic and the 'Popular Unity', while waving red as well as Republican flags, the appearance of a group of ultras (led by Luís Garcia Berlanga no less) who threaten the protagonists when they are pasting electoral propaganda. As well as showing a new type of roles, communist and progressive people close to 30 years old who do not know what to do with their lives and even have a new way of behaving and speaking, with a direct sound that makes the viewer concentrate totally in order to understand what they say, making it necessary to watch it with subtitles to understand the long conversations. The public of the time turned it into much more of a comedy than it really was, seeing themselves reflected for the first time in characters that were new to Spanish cinema, and over the years it has become an effective but boring document about a certain era. The performances of the then not very well-known actors: Carmen Maura, Miguel Arribas, Joaquín Hinojosa, Concha Grégori are very natural and spontaneous, adding other actors who already had a certain acting career, such as Pedro Diaz del Corral who was a child prodigy in Del Rosa al Amarillo by Manuel Summers, Emma Cohen, Félix Rotaeta and director Luis García Berlanga, among others.
Made in a rather elementary way by the debuting scriptwriter, producer and director Fernando Colomo. Generally shot in very long close-ups with the characters sitting, talking non-stop and the camera making brief movements. With this and his second film: "¿Que hace una chica como tú en un sitio como este ? (What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?)" Colomo gave the starting shot for this way of making films in the field of comedy, in which he would be accompanied by Fernando Trueba and his "Opera Prima" or Almodovar with "Pepi, Luci, Bom." Carmen Maura, who had already worked with Colomo in some of his shorts, would be one of the muses of this movement full of vitality. Rating: 4/10. Only for completists and unforgivable, hardcore fans of Spanish cinema.
