Netflix many of their productions, but some of them are hidden gems which you stumble on while looking for something else. Or, like in my case, you see people talking about a certain show on social media and you want to know what the fuss is all about.
All my respect goes to Netflix, for not only producing movies or shows with well-known actors and stories taking place in the same countries and cities, but for putting the spotlight on genres, languages, and countries that might not find their way onto someone’s screen. Netflix definitely provides us with a lot of diversity, which is lacking in the typical mainstream productions. The Spanish drama thriller Elite has everything to become your next favourite binge watch!
Three working class students and friends, Samuel (Itzan Escamilla), Nadia (Mina El Hammani), and Christian (Miguel Herrán), are given scholarships to the most exclusive private elite secondary school in Spain, Las Encinas, by the construction company who are responsible for the collapse of their school. Needless to say, that at first all three of them are outsiders and not welcomed by the mostly arrogant students. While Christian does not care about it and tries his best to charm everyone around him, Nadia struggles with the school policy which forbids her to wear her hijab at school. As for Samuel, he befriends the rebellious Marina (María Pedraza) who turns out to be the daughter of the man who paid for his scholarship.
Through flash-forward scenes, we learn that at the end of the first season someone will be murdered and that one of those students is the murderer. After the victim is revealed at the end of season one, season two focuses on finding the murderer and the disappearance of a student and how both cases are linked. At this current point in time, it is unknown what the plot of the third season will be.
But it would not be a Spanish drama if there were not a lot of relationship problems involved.
Samuel soon falls in love with Marina, who is more interested in his brother, Nano (Jaime Lorente), who just came out of prison. Her overprotective adoptive brother, Guzmán (Miguel Bernardeau), is not happy about the relationship choices of his sister, which have brought herself and her family a lot of pain and problems in the past. Guzmán is in a relationship with Lucrecia (Danna Paola) who sees herself as the number one for everyone and in everything. Lu sees Nadia as a potential threat when it comes to be the best in class, not knowing that Guzmán feels attracted to Nadia and Lu could lose more than just a good grade. This situation gets spiced up when in season two when Lu’s brother, Valerio (Jorge López), joins them at Las Encinas.
There is a little bit of Call Me By Your Name feeling in the air when it comes to Ander (Arón Piper) and Omar (Omar Ayuso). Omar is Nadia’s brother and Samuel’s best friend, and he was not so lucky like his sister and has to help their parents in their grocery store instead of going to school. As children of Palestinian immigrants, they both have grown up in a strict home, in which the child does what their parents tell them to do, such as an arranged marriage. And who knows what would happen if he would tell his conservative parents that he is gay… To gather enough money to get away from them, he secretly sells drugs. One of his customers is Ander, the son of the principal at Las Encinas. They soon become friends and later start a relationship. Ander and his parents help Omar after he has outed himself to his parents.
If you head is already spinning, wait until you meet the last couple of interesting characters.
Carla (Ester Expósito), Marina’s and Lu’s best friend, and Polo (Álvaro Rico), best friend with Guzmán and Ander, have been together forever, which has partly to do with their aristocratic heritage. To spice up their relationship, the polyamorous couple lay their eyes on Christian whose hopes are up to get Carla all to himself at some point.
In the second season, the couple breaks up and Carla starts to date Samuel while Polo starts a relationship with the new student, Cayetana (Georgina Amorós), who tricks everyone through her social media presence to believe that she is the daughter of a wealthy family while her mother is the new janitor at Las Encinas, which got her a free scholarship to the school. In her free time, Cayetana often helps her mother with cleaning houses of the rich.
Another new student who starts the new school year at Las Encinas is Rebeka (Claudia Salas) who comes from a poor background and whose family recently became rich. She feels out of place at the private school and soon befriends Nadia, with whom she can be herself and does not have to life up to higher standards. Rebeka is the one who helps Nadia with her struggle to accept that she is more than her parents and relationship dictate her and starts to make her own decisions.
Personally, I like how the characters are intertwined with one another and there’s also perfect character development with all the main characters. The main plot, which is the murder of a student, was not my primary reason to watch Elite. I wanted to know what was in store for everyone and what their decisions will be over the course of the series. As you can see, there is plenty to discover and dive into before you will even get to the point of who the victim and who the murder is.
Before that, you will meet some strong females and some vulnerable male characters, each with an interesting story to tell and some of them evolve beautifully. Elite is capturing the audience with its corruption and seduction. It shows perfectly what happens when you cover up a mistake, your lies become more and more complicated and what envy and anger can do to a person.
Elite is perfect for people who like the books One of Us Is Lying and the show 13 Reasons Why.
Season One and Two have eight episodes each and they are available on Netflix. Season Three has been confirmed and has finished shooting. The release is planned for 2020.
