Our review is “Esa es la 'U'”, the documentary about the history of Universitario de Deportes | ELDOMINICAL

Perhaps the biggest problem in combining sport and cinema is that the former tends to seek excellence in a desperate race for success, while film stories often feel better about falling, defeat, and failure. It's not that well-made sports movies don't exist, but they're usually an exception. And in the documentary sector, heroic and laudatory portraits focusing on stars on the fields have abounded lately. Just look through the platforms' catalogs to confirm it.

Let's now focus on Peru, whose cinematography has few sports documentaries: I think of “Rodar contra todo” by Marianela Vega (more focused on the story of resistance of athletes with disabilities), “Largo tiempo” by Gonzalo Benavente (a respectable attempt at review the classification for the 2018 World Cup in Russia) or “Depth test”, by Óscar Bermeo and Christian Acuña (about the figure of Inés Melchor and other long-distance runners from the central mountains Peruvian).

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Let's add to the short list “Esta es la U”, the documentary directed by Daniel Farfán that, from the start, displays its celebratory purpose. It is a work carried out to commemorate the 100 years of the University Sports Club, and therefore yields to the solemn speech, to the praise of idols, to the motivational story. If critical episodes are addressed – which the U has had many –, it is always to explain an epic improvement. Once its intentions are understood, its pros and cons can be coldly analyzed.

The first thing to highlight is that Farfán strives to transcend the mere television report on Sundays. In “Esta es la U” there is a narrative care that begins from the structure of its script: instead of opting for a chronological story, the film jumps in time to draw parallels between the recent life of the club and the milestones of the past , thus highlighting the constancy over time of its identity and its colors. Within this review of historical moments, the sensitivity when addressing non-football issues stands out: the passage focused on the Brazilian Eduardo Esidio, a soccer player who was diagnosed with HIV in 1998, is, without a doubt, one of the best moments of the documentary.

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On the other hand, less successful is its general selection of testimonies. Bringing together more than 100 interviewees when many of them have little or nothing to say becomes a flat cumulative exercise; and the same goes for the insertion of some images that seem like simple patches, even repeated. There are also absences that resonate (legends like 'Toto' Terry or Roberto Scarone do not appear in the film, and if they do, they go unnoticed). And special mention for the increasingly unpalatable abuse of drone shots (film students should know that every time they relapse into this resource, an Orson Welles or a Kurosawa die again in their graves).

Once the additions and subtractions are done, “Esta es la U” is a documentary that fulfills its mission to inform and move. The fans, at least, will appreciate so much memory and emotion.