I say “phenomenal” too many times. I already knew it, but watching My Christmas at Disney I have become more aware of it and I plan to change it. “Phenomenal” is a very Madrid expression (I am) and very posh (I wish I were). In My Christmas, Isabel Preysler also says it a lot. Everything phenomenal. Except the series. My Christmas is horrible and boring. Its two episodes are short, but watching them takes forever. Next to Isabel Preysler, the series about (María) Pombo’s family is The Sweetest Thing, The First Wives Club and Out of Wave together. At what point do we confuse elegance with insubstantiality?
Isabel Preysler is a very interesting character. She is many things at once and, if My Christmas is to be believed, she really is none of them. She is a submissive geisha, ruthless businesswoman, mantis, sphinx, power in the shadows, mummy and collective projection. If we ask her (as a obsequious voice-over does in My Christmas), she will tell us that above all she is a mother, a grandmother, a friend of her friends, and all the commonplace things she can think of. Isabel Preysler is what you want her to be. Maybe that’s why My Christmas seems like such empty content to me: my favorite Preysler is the one who says “no”, the one who controls the times, the one who hides what she knows, the one who intrigues and the one who, without really doing anything, gets rich. . That Isabel is not in My Christmas, only in my head.
Our The Crown should not be about the Bourbons but about the Preyslers. Her matriarch is perfect for filling her with interesting things. The same thing that Peter Morgan does with Queen Isabel or Lady Di could be done here by Javier Olivares, Isa Peña, Cristóbal Garrido or Anna R. Costa with Isabel Preysler. Although we all know that this type of fiction in Spain ends up mired in trials and lawsuits.
My Christmas premieres the same week that the poster for the second season of Feud was revealed. After recounting the feud between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Ryan Murphy will dedicate his series to Capote and his swans. Those women who had the writer as a pet friend without suspecting that he could be using them as material for his caustic writings. To no one’s surprise, Capote let them sell, exposing his petty sins and dismantling the high society paripe, whatever that is.
Like the enormous paripé that it is, My Christmas cries out to be dismantled. I would settle for a making of the two episodes of her in which we can see Isabel saying “no.” When she says that she doesn’t like to be disturbed while she is having breakfast, the pantomime is hilarious: we see her eating her kiwi and grapefruit alone but we know that, in addition to the interlocutor who asks her stupid questions, there is a complete film crew there. It all makes for a lot of laughter and, above all, a lot of sleep. And a lot of laziness. The quintessential Spanish swan is stuffed. My Christmas smells like talcum powder, tranquilizers and mothballs. Everything is phenomenal, everything is ideal, everything is gorgeous. It’s like staring at a beige wall all afternoon.
