Eva Lasting follows the titular girl’s arrival at an all-boys school in the 70s Colombia, rendering Camilo and his friends’ lives into a frenzy of adventures and exploration.
Story
Eva Lasting arrives at José María Root District School, an all-boys institution. Her arrival wreaks havoc all over the school, and inside Camilo’s heart, who becomes a bit more devoted to his love for her than his friends.
Eva serves as a disruptor, a leader, and teacher, and even a guide to the boys, improving their personalities in more ways than they can register for most of the series. Camilo develops an interest in the literature, owing to Eva’s company.
While she keeps recommending different books to Camilo, he can’t bring himself together to confess his love to her, on top of worrying about the secrets that she’s hiding. After a couple of conflicts, farewells, and breakups, Eva and Camilo get together.
However, their union is short-lived, as issues of her money-laundering father plague her as well, and she has to be sent away to her aunt’s care in America. Camilo tries to get to her but stops when he realizes America is a distant dream for him currently while another grave issue appears before him.
Performances
Emmanuel Restrepo plays the fool with great commitment, nailing the mannerisms of the archetype he portrays with near perfection. He’s the meek, slender, skinny, cowardly kid who ends up pulling through and even if initially reluctant to a perilous situation, bares it all and braces himself for the battle ahead.
Standing opposite of him is the ferocious feminist Eva, played with great panache and confidence by Fransica Estevez. Although there are few scenes that allow for Eva to be vulnerable, the scenes that do, benefit from Estevez’s commendable range.
In Camilo’s circle of male friends, Salcedo is a prominent presence, and one that’s rendered beautifully by Sergio Palau, who almost effortlessly growls as the group bully while also bleeding his heart out as the only many in a family going through turmoil, and in a body that’s conflicted about its sexual orientation.
Other performances of note in Eva Lasting include those by Santiago Alarcón and Verónica Orozco as Camilos’s parents José and Ana.
Positives
Eva Lasting has a refreshing frenetic pace that accurately resembles the genetic makeup of the series, one required to convey the chaos of the coming-of-age tales in a 70s Colombian all-boys school.
The series champions feminist themes, causes, and literature, and does it in a manner that actually seems to be pretty effective in educating its target audience.
The series captures a really accurate picture of the emotional turmoil and the hormonal whiplash that teenagers go through, especially in an era where the internet didn’t exist.
The series benefits from a perfect casting as almost all actors do their roles justice, lending the time period the story is set in a degree of authenticity that the cinematography and set designs might not be able to.
Negatives
The loose ends are treated with quite a bit of haste at the end of Eva Lasting, with the climactic aspect of the finality feeling anything but gratifying.
Castro and Arbeláez’s stories are bereft of content, at least of a quantity comparable to the other characters in their group.
The series suffers from the classic Netflix problem of straying as further from the commitment to era-appropriate aesthetics when it comes to dialogue deliveries, performances, and even the set designs, which feel so much like the obvious set designs made for a show.
Verdict
Eva Lasting is a blast of the past that feels really modern as the themes, conflicts, and characters it deals with are extremely resonant with contemporary times. With comedy, cringe, and teenage aloofness mixed with commendable feminist and progressive messages, the series is a binge treat.
Eva Lasting
Director: Maria Gamboa, Mateo Stivelberg
Date Created: 2023-02-15 13:30
3.5
Also Read: Eva Lasting ending explained: Do Eva and Camilo end up together?