Netflix, ‘Elite’ star Ester Expósito and Locarno Winner Mar Coll are adapting Clarín’s classic novel into a feature film which went into production Oct. 23, produced by María Zamora at Elastica Films (“Alcarràs” “Romería”).
Bombshell news – nothing was known of the movie until Friday’s announcement – “La Regenta” now weighs in as one of Spain’s biggest movies of 2027.
Lambasted in its day, Clarín’s “La Regenta” is now acclaimed as a masterpiece, second only to “The Quixote” in Spain, “one of the great novels of the 19th century, alongside ‘Madame Bovary’ and ‘Anna Karenina,’” English writer Julian Barnes said this week.
The current adaptation will be a new contemporary version that reinterprets the classic from a “fresh female perspective,” Netflix announced Friday.
“La Regenta” marks Netflix’s latest venture into revered big literary IP in the Spanish-speaking world after adaptations of Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” on Colombia and “The Eternaut” in Argentina. Both were Netflix Global Top 10 non-English hits and signature shows for the U.S. streaming giant.
Published over 1884-85, “La Regenta” turns on Ana Ozores, young, beautiful and married off to Victor Quintanar, a man twice her age and ex magistrate of Vetusta, a sleepy stifling provincial city where, says Netflix “everything is known and everything is judged.”
Seeking sense to her loveless existence, at least in the novel Ana attracts the predatorial lust of Magistral Fermín de Pas, her sensual confessor at La Vetusta cathedral, as well as the attentions of local Don Juan Álvaro Mejías.
“What begins as a private crisis becomes a silent struggle between desire, faith and social power, where Ana’s every move is watched, judged and used by those around her,” the synopsis ends.
Besides Expósito “La Regenta” is fronted by International Emmy Award winner Oriol Pla (“I, Addict,” “The Day After Tomorrow”) as Magistral Fermín de Pas, Vito Sanz (“Billionaires’ Bunker”) as Victor Quintanar and Borja Luna (“Breathless,” “No Traces”) as Álvaro Mesía,
The film big cast also features Clara Ingold (“Iron Reign”) as Petra, Carlos González (“La Bola Negra”) as Frígilis, Ana Torrent (“Thesis”) as Doña Paula, Itsaso Arana (“The Other Way Around,”) as Visitación, and Gonzalo de Castro (“The Inmortal”) as Ripamilán,
Clarín’s monumental, nearly 700-page novel mixes a searing portrait of a backward, hypocritical and vulgar provincial Spain; a vision of toxic masculine egotism; with a deep dive into the psychology and contradictions of its two central characters, Ana and Fermín de Pas.
“La Regenta” the film is written by Coll, Anna R. Costa, co-scribe of series standout “Madrid Arde” and the Barcelona-based Diego Vega, one of Peru’s top auteurs (“October,” “My Lucky Day”).
Coll on ‘La Regenta’
“Clarín’s novel is so rich that dozens of different adaptations can be made from it, like those that came before ours or those that will follow it,” said Coll.
“I have tried to approach the material, humbly, from a radically personal perspective, as I always do,” she added. “I have made my own what has moved me most in the novel, and what explores the loneliness and heartbreak of this regent’s wife, who tirelessly longs to give meaning to her life. A luminous character inhabiting a universe poised to prey on her. A woman whose sensitivity and stubborn search constitute, in themselves, a form of resistance.”
As an adaptation, “La Regenta” fits Coll like a glove. A founding mother of the Newest Catalan Cinema and cultured dissident as Clarion before her, Mar Coll, throughout a now 20-year career, has consistently questioned established thought. That has been Catalan upper middle-class hypocrisy and emotional paralysis (Goya winner “Three Days With the Family”), the comic patriarchy of paternal narcissism (series “Matar al Padre”) and the superiority of Scandinavian social models (“This Is Not Sweden”), Variety has written.
Her latest film, “Salve María,” which won a Locarno Special Mention in 2024, took a beg-to-differ view on maternity, questioning what still remains a taboo: whether all women are cut out for motherhood.
María Zamora and Elastica Films
Zamora, whose productions also include 2023 San Sebastián Golden Shell winner “The Rye Horn” and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight winner “Creatura,” won Spain’s National Cinematography Award for championing a new generation of Spanish auteurs, often women, driving their impact on the international film scene and helping them make on occasions a remarkable impact in domestic Spanish distribution.