Marc Ortiz Prades’ debut feature, The Bad Names (Els mals noms), arrives as a solemn Valencian-language historical drama that traces a life marked by a constant collision between inner self and hostile world. The film presents the harrowing story of Florencio Pla Messeguer, remembered as “La Pastora” (The Shepherdess), whose existence unfolds with brutal clarity in the rigid terrain of early 20th-century rural Spain.
The narrative follows an intersex person born in 1917 and lingers on the deep alienation that shapes a relentless search for identity within an unforgiving moral climate. The Spanish Civil War and the later Franco regime form a cold, unyielding backdrop, where external political violence echoes the turmoil within Florencio’s own sense of being.
The title condenses this existential wound into language itself, collecting the imposed or chosen names Teresa, Teresot, Durruti, La Pastora, Florencio as if they were masks placed upon a presence that never fully coincides with any of them.
The Phenomenology of Invisibility
The film approaches the existential condition of social non-existence through Florencio’s biography. His registration as female at birth under the name Teresa, a decision made in response to his ambiguous sex characteristics, frames his life as a study of existence outside what counts as legible humanity and avoids turning him into a spectacle of misfortune.
Difference marks him from the outset as an exile from the sanctioned community of the living. The narrative returns again and again to the act of naming and the fragile promise of visibility. When Florencio looks at the dictionary and remarks, “All the words are here except one. I’m not in it,” the line becomes a philosophical axiom: where language has no place for a body, that body risks falling out of reality itself.
Performance carries this meditation on being seen. Three performers share the role, with Pablo Molinero embodying the adult Florencio with a striking stillness. He appears as a stoic, taciturn, illiterate figure whose physical bulk hides persistent fragility and enduring pain. The body seems both shield and wound.
The portrayal sustains the tension between historical emblem and practical human being forced to endure circumstances he did not choose. Florencio’s private ordeal links to a wider field of historical memory, and the film asks the viewer to remember injuries that have shaped the present. It speaks of tolerance and acceptance as ethical tasks that extend from his life into our own time.
Shadows, Structure, and Silence
Marc Ortiz Prades’ direction, confident for a first feature, leans toward an elegiac and melancholic register, adopting a slow tempo that invites the spectator to listen to silence. The film draws power from scenes where almost nothing is spoken, allowing the camera to linger on the tortured lines of Florencio’s face. Alberto Bañares’ cinematography shapes a world of severe, almost brutal beauty.
Many compositions feel “almost painterly,” recalling Baroque imagery with stark chiaroscuro and tenebrism. This visual language, with its echoes of Goya and Caravaggio, places grinding rural poverty and oppressed communities beside the majestic yet indifferent forested Valencian landscapes where Florencio seeks refuge.
The boxy 4:3 aspect ratio operates as a conceptual device. The narrow frame acts as a pressure chamber, suggesting emotion held in check. Tight compositions clamp down on Florencio’s body and spirit, drawing the eye to pain that never finds release.
The frame becomes a cage. Formal discipline continues in the story’s division into six titled chapters, which mirror a life pieced together from scattered names and roles. The score, heavy with haunting and ominous tones and dominated by ethereal female voices, saturates the film with a sense of doom that never quite dissipates and affirms the tragic shape of the narrative.
The Ephemeral Myth of La Pastora
Florencio’s existence unfolds as a procession of identities, each name heralding a fresh phase of isolation or adaptation. As a child, he receives the mocking labels Teresa and Teresot. Later, during his efforts to find work, he fails again and again to secure recognition as the man he understands himself to be. Even during the Civil War, he experiences rejection from the Republican side.
A turning point arrives after the war, when his ambiguous appearance leads to his selection for the maquis, the political resistance active in the mountains. Under the name Durruti, he briefly finds a sense of purpose and wary companionship. The phrase “bad names” describes Florencio’s shifting labels and the coded nicknames used among the maquis, which folds another shade of meaning into the title.
The Francoist regime introduces the most severe form of historical cruelty. Propaganda seizes on Florencio’s ambiguity and recasts him as “La Pastora,” a monstrous half-man, half-woman outlaw. He becomes the convenient figure onto whom fascist murders in the region can be projected. The regime turns his difference into a political tool, shaping a story in which anything outside a strict binary appears criminal and perverse.
Florencio’s life becomes an example of the ease with which power can fabricate a monster for its own purposes. He is captured in 1960 and, after his sentence is commuted, he serves 17 years in prison. He dies in 2004, having finally taken the name Florencio and securing, in his last years, a limited form of self-recognition that the film treats with quiet gravity, though it leaves open how far such recognition can heal a life shaped by erasure.
The Bad Names (Els mals noms) is a Valencian-language historical drama that premiered at the Seville European Film Festival in 2024. The film recounts the brutal, true story of Florencio Pla Meseguer, an intersex person born in 1917, who was known as ‘La Pastora’ and persecuted during the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent Franco regime. The film’s early release has been primarily limited to the film festival circuit in Europe; it is not yet available on major streaming platforms or in general theatrical release.
Credits
Title: The Bad Names (Els mals noms)
Distributor: TvON Producciones (International Sales), Admirable Films, Lamalanga Productions (Production Companies)
Release date: 2024 (Premiere at Seville European Film Festival)
Director: Marc Ortiz Prades
Writers: Marc Ortiz Prades
Producers and Executive Producers: Paloma Mora, Marc Munoz
Cast: Pablo Molinero, Álex Bausá, Adrià Nebot, Raquel Ferri, Patrícia Bargalló, Isak Férriz, Morgan Blasco, Jaume Madaula, Nacho Fresneda
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Alberto Bañares
Editors: Gal-la de Yzaguirre
Composer: Maria Bertomeu, Marina Alcantud, Teresa Núñez
The Review
The Bad Names
The Bad Names is a somber, visually masterful debut that treats its historical subject with profound existential weight. The film uses the life of Florencio Pla as a lens to examine societal cruelty and the burden of living outside predefined identity structures. While sometimes static in its rigor, the powerful performances, particularly Molinero's study in stoicism, and the stunning, tenebrist cinematography solidify its status as an essential meditation on visibility, memory, and the political anatomy of difference. It is a work of enduring tragic power.
PROS
- Stunning, painterly cinematography (tenebrism and chiaroscuro).
- Powerful, restrained central performance by Pablo Molinero.
- Deeply moving exploration of identity, visibility, and societal exclusion.
- Artful use of the 4:3 aspect ratio to convey psychological constraint.
- Haunting, ominous score that reinforces the tragic tone.
- Strong thematic relevance regarding historical memory and tolerance.
CONS
- The deliberately languid pace may feel static at times.
- The segmented chapter structure can give the narrative a fragmented feel.
- Dialogue scenes are occasionally less impactful than the visual silence.
