The Misfits Club

Valeria, who has moved to Madrid with her mother after her parents' divorce, gets into a fight on her first day at the new school. As punishment she is sent to after-school group counselling. There she finds several other teenagers gathered for the same reasons, and the group quickly turns into a friendship. The film is not interested in a love triangle. It is interested in a compulsory group becoming voluntary: none of these young people chose to be there, and the film is about them choosing each other. Each carries something, and not all of it comes out. The form is Spanish teen drama: school corridors, Madrid streets, relationships running through mobile phones, and pop music. Carlos Sedes directed. The source is ¡Buenos días, princesa! by Francisco de Paula, writing as Blue Jeans, with a large young readership in Spain; the film opened on 25 December 2014. Charlotte Vega plays Valeria, with Ivana Baquero and Patrick Criado in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like teen drama and book adaptations. Who it is not for: anyone after an original story. The structure is familiar, several characters in the crowded cast are left half-drawn and the romance eventually smothers everything else.