‘Harakiri, I Miss You’ Review: The Young Men Are Not Alright in a Timely Spanish Tale of Misogyny and Aimlessness

Toxic masculinity, of both the younger and older varieties, are on unsettling display in Alejandro Castro Arias’ debut feature, which recently received its world premiere at the Oldenburg International Film Festival. Depicting 24 hours in the lives of three young men bound together by their arrested adolescence and misogynistic attitudes, Harakiri, I Miss You is an uncomfortable but rewarding watch. The film, shot in the sort of seemingly improvisational, realistic style championed by John Cassavetes, may be too raw for mainstream consumption but deservingly snagged the festival’s award for best first feature.

The filmmaker also has one of the lead roles alongside actor Diego Salomon, with whom he co-scripted, and Samuel Rotter. The trio play young men — all with the same first names as themselves — who share a Madrid apartment together.

Their immaturity is established in an early scene in which they’re seen spying on a woman as she’s getting undressed in her apartment across the street. “I love bitches like her,” one of them leers. “I hope she gives me AIDS.”  

Not long after, Diego spies on Magdalena (Ines Efron), who lives in their building, at a café and through the streets, pretending to arrive home at the same time by happenstance and helping her with the door lock. He invites her to see their apartment, and almost immediately begins clumsily hitting on her, with little reciprocation. “Don’t you feel like something is happening between us?” he asks. “No,” she immediately replies.

After she leaves Diego’s room, Alejandro takes his turn, managing to get her drunk enough that she makes out with him. But he continues his aggressiveness even after she begins to protest. She keeps repeating, “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” until she finally gathers herself together and flees.

The ill-fated attempts at seduction lead the three of them to head out again, with a morose Diego lamenting that he’s fallen in love. They get wasted at a party and engage in a drunken brawl. And when they attempt to retrieve their car, the parking lot attendant urges them not to drive while drunk. He’s so quietly mournful in his advice, based on personal experience, that they agree to leave it there; the interlude is one of the most quietly impactful in the film.

When they hail a taxi, it turns out to be driven by Rogelio (Enrique San Francisco), who has been seen in several earlier scenes. Despite his advanced age, he turns out to have plenty in common with his riders, bonding with them in their sexism and offering such pearls of wisdom as “I’ve always said it, a man who isn’t fucked properly is unbearable.”

After getting raucous at a restaurant during a late-night snack, they head home by subway. Sitting opposite them is an attractive young woman, sexily dressed, whom they ogle shamelessly. She stares right back at them, taunting them with her sexuality and even uncrossing her legs and baring a breast. Instead of enjoying the display, the men look utterly defeated.

Harakiri, I Miss You makes for painful and sometimes tedious viewing. But there’s no denying that it vividly conveys the restless desolation of young men stymied by their inability to achieve meaningful relationships, or indeed much of anything else. Featuring lived-in performances by its three leads and a compelling air of melancholy, it feels very much a film for these times.