‘Perfect Life’ Creator Leticia Dolera Plumbs Sex Taboos in New Series ‘Puberty’ (EXCLUSIVE)

John Hopewell
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Leticia Dolera, co-writer, lead director and star of the Movistar Plus-HBO Max produced “Perfect Life,” a 2019 double Canneseries winner, is developing a new series, “Puberty,” which looks sure to be one of the hottest titles at this month’s Conecta Fiction & Entertainment.

Now in development, “Puberty” will be presented in Conecta Fiction’s High-End Series section. 

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Penned by Dolera and writer-producer Almudena Monzú (“Picadero,” “Passion,” “ASMR”) and to be directed by Dolera, “Puberty” (“Pubertat”) turns on an alleged sexual assault among adolescents, which sheds light on the sexual taboos of the adults in charge of them.

“Can a 13-year-old boy be a sexual aggressor? And who’s responsible? The under-age boy, his family or society? Surely all of them,” the synopsis runs. 

“‘Puberty’ talks about the weight of taboo and how this is transmitted between generation and generation, at a cultural, emotional and psychological level,” Dolera commented. “One of the big taboos the series talks about is sex: What place it has in our lives, and how this affects our way of seeing the world and our relating with other people,” she added.

Presented as a six one-hour-episode series, “Puberty” is set up at Distinto Films, producers of Locarno winner “The Odd-Job Men,” and Corte y Confección de Películas, Dolera’s own label which also produced “Perfect Life.”

“‘Pubertat’ is a high-end series, a clear example of how to address a universal issue through a local sensibility and iconography,” said the series’ producers, Distinto Films’ Miriam Porté and Oriol Maymó.

“Perfect Life” is very possibly the highest achievement to date by any female director in Spain on the country’s high-end TV series scene.

At Canneseries, it won both best series and special best special performance for its female leads – Dolera, Celia Freijeiro, Aixa Villagrán – from a jury presided over by “Dark” co-creator Baran bo Odar.

Sold well by Beta Film in Europe – to RTL and France’s M6, for instance –  its first season was acquired by HBO Max for the U.S. HBO Max also committed to co-produce a second season which it dropped in Dec. 2021.

The series’ largest coup, perhaps, was to address hugely relevant contemporary issues in a bright and breezy half-hour format, often decked out by pop-out primal colors, which mixed the grotesque, high emotion, eschatology, and bathos, often at one and the same time, tipping its hat at times to Spain’s grand comedic tradition of Fernando Fernán Gómez, Luis Berlanga and Rafael Azcona. 

Charting three women’s frustration at traditional models for female happiness which they can’t get near to or do but still sense something is missing, “Perfect Life” pushed the envelope on sex by merely suggesting that a married woman could get the hots for a man who is not her husband.

“Puberty” looks set to take this dive into sex a lot deeper. It is co-written by Amor y Lujo co-founder Monzú, who created “Picadero,” a neo-noir thriller headed by a libertine female gumshoe. Selected for both the 2021 Series Mania Forum and Berlinale’s 2022 Co-Pro Series competition – a rare distinction – it has been boarded by Mauricio Leiva Cock’s Fidelio Films in Colombia and Antonio Asensio’s Madrid-based Zeta Studios, producers of “Elite,” with Isabel Coixet attached to direct.

Founded by Porté, Distinto Films, has produced Rafael Cortés’ “Yo,” a 2007 Rotterdam Fipresci prize winner, “The Wild Ones,” a 2012 Málaga Festival best picture laureate, and “The Odd-Job Men,” a Locarno 2021 best actor winner. 

Both the latter are directed by women, Patricia Ferreira and Neus Ballús, as Distinto Films has pushed to bring on an exciting generation of emerging female directors. 

It is linked to Dolera by a philosophy – making crafted, auteurist works for as wide an audience as possible –  and talent relationships, producing, for example, the Berlinale main competition short “Watermelon,” directed by Irene Moray and starring Elena Martin, both directors on episodes of “Perfect Life.” 

Maymó produced “Perfect Life” and another standout Movistar Plus series, Mariano Barroso’s “The Invisible Line.”

A Europe-Latin America co-production and networking forum, Conecta Fiction & Entertainment runs June 21-24 in Toledo, south of Madrid.

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