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Posted: 2024-07-24 06:00:00

Three of his jock friends resolve to rough Alma up when she decides that the time has come to take a stand. She’s told afterwards by Nata that she’s “being way too intense” about their threats. However, as we see in a flashback to her early childhood, Alma has always been a fighter, determined to make her own way in the world, a rebel in waiting.

Doubts also form around the school’s history teacher, Juan Lopez Sanchez (Ivan Massagué), right from his first appearance, which has him telling his class a risqué story about the 19th-century king, “Ferdinand the Desired”. Alma certainly believes Berta (Teresa de Mera), an old friend who comes back into her life with a story about him that makes sense. Alma takes her campaign on Berta’s behalf to social media, which becomes a recurring battleground in the series, but then doubts emerge and she’s forced to reassess her position.

The parents have their parts to play too. Even if they aren’t directly involved in what’s happening at the school, their way of thinking is seen to play a significant role. Alma’s clashes with her middle-class parents, Vero and Pablo (Ruth Diaz and Eloy Azarin), will be familiar to anyone who’s raised a teenager.

But, while they’re sometimes at a loss as to how best to deal with what Pablo sees as Alma’s “contempt, rejection and indifference”, they’re eminently sympathetic in their attempts to do the right thing by their daughter. Greta gets it right when she enthuses about Alma’s mother as “the GOAT” and observes in response to her friend’s dissent, “I guess being a mum can’t be easy a lot of the time.”

Greta’s home life is less traditional, her parents (Fernando Barona and Elsa Chaves) supportive and concerned but not so involved. Distracted by financial pressures, they’re reliant on income from the cannabis crop cultivated in the cellar by her older brother, David (José Pastor), to avoid losing their home, a situation that creates stresses for everyone in the family.

Alma’s mother’s progressive view of the world emerges through their mother-daughter chats: “We have to think about the consequences of our actions,” she sensibly advises Alma. Her eager involvement in an imminent women’s rights march through Madrid creates a telling contrast with Nata’s mother (Irene Anula), who regards the demonstration as pointless.

“Beware. A rapist is hiding in there” reads the banner that Alma (Nicole Wallace) erects at her school in Raising Voices.

“Beware. A rapist is hiding in there” reads the banner that Alma (Nicole Wallace) erects at her school in Raising Voices.Credit: Netflix

Her mother-daughter chats with Nata also follow a different agenda. With Nata’s father reduced to a largely irrelevant presence in their home, her mother counsels that the best way of dealing with boyfriend problems is to forgive, forget and move on. “Sometimes brushing off silly behaviours and looking the other way is best in order not to lose them,” she tells her daughter. “As a woman, you’re going to have to concede certain things. Because that’s life.”

As the title indicates, the series’ focus is firmly on how important it is for young girls and women not to suffer in silence. It isn’t concerned about pondering the factors that might turn boys and young men into “violadores”. Nor does it need to. Its only flaw a slightly over-the-top denouement, Raising Voices is firmly grounded in the trials facing teenage girls and their parents everywhere.

And its positive notes ring true. The sequence in which Alma joyfully bounces along the street after learning of David’s interest in her is delightfully infectious. And the series’ skilfully measured tone not only points to how life can turn sour for its characters but also to the ways in which their intelligence and their resilience might enable them to deal with the downside.

While it’s entirely fictional, Raising Voices does drop its characters into the actual 2018 Women’s March through Madrid, linking it to Alma’s individual act of protest. And it also makes specific reference to a couple of real-life cases. Establishing the name Coleman Miller as her online identity for posts designed to attract attention to her cause, Alma draws on Greta’s information about two young American women, Daisy Coleman and Chanel Miller, who were victims of shocking sexual assaults, news of which eventually reverberated around the world.

The disturbing documentary, Audrie & Daisy (2016, Netflix), recounts the tragic fate that befell Coleman (and Audrie Pott), and Miller’s 2019 memoir, Know My Name: A Memoir, and I Am With You (YouTube), the short animated film she made with Emily Moore later the same year, articulate her anger at what happened to her.

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Directed by Eduard Cortes, David Ulloa and Marta Font, Raising Voices is smartly shaped, evocatively balanced and emotionally powerful. Driven by a quiet fury and a poignant empathy, it deserves to be high on every viewer’s must-watch list.

Raising Voices is on Netflix.

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