Superstar Review: Bold But Confusing Glimpse into Spanish Pop Culture

Superstar Review

Director: Nacho Vigalondo and Claudia Costafreda,

Date Created: 2025-07-19 00:35

Editor's Rating:
2.5

Superstar Review: Directed by Nacho Vigalondo and Claudia Costafreda, Superestar is a Spanish series comprising six episodes, each approximately an hour long, starring Ingrid García Jonsson as Yurena, with Neus Asensi, Natalia de Molina, Carlos Areces, Pepón Nieto, and Rocío Ibáñez in key roles. The drama is about the life story of Tamara, also known as Yurena, a flamboyant, unconventional pop star in Spain with an unconventional personality and colourful media image.

Despite never having heard of Tamara prior to the Superstar series, I couldn’t help but be curious about what she was like. The Netflix synopsis had me thinking that it was this wild combination of pop culture, private life, and odd celebrity. Having now completed the show, however, I was left in the dark and somehow disconnected from its titular character.

Superstar Review

If you’re expecting Superstar to give you some wonderful insight into who Tamara really was, you might be disappointed. The show doesn’t present her story in a linear or straightforward manner. Rather, it mixes true events with outrageous fantasy, dreamlike symbolism, and unorthodox storytelling. This sort of creative approach can sometimes be fun and imaginative. But here, I found it difficult largely to stay engaged with the story.

The plot jumps forward and backwards, and the look is distracting more frequently than it helps. There are surrealistic touches, talking objects, and symbolic pictures that do not necessarily translate. An important piece of information that I did not know (without revealing too much) is that the same older woman plays the mother throughout the time frames, even when the daughter is only a toddler. Maybe it was supposed to be magical, but to me it was muddled.

Aside from all that, the Netflix Biopic series of Tamara is definitely flashy to look at. The colours are bright and exaggerated—especially red, which seems to be used to indicate emotion, danger, or power. The costume design is excellent, capturing the flashy popular culture Tamara lived in. The sets are elaborate, and the musical numbers are filmed in a hip, hypnotic style.

But despite all its flashy graphics, the show fails on a human level. I was kept waiting for that one moment that would allow me really to know Tamara as a human being—the pain, the hopes, the highs and lows. But style before substance. By the final episode, I still didn’t feel like I ever truly “knew” her.

Performance is arguably the strongest feature of this Spanish series Superstar. Ingrid García Jonsson acts so boldly and intensely as Yurena. Even when the story around her is typically muddled, she acts out the character with uncompromising commitment. The rest of the cast acts well, especially in conveying the complex interactions between fame, family, and personal identity.

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The mother-daughter relationship, however, is the standout. There are times when you catch the tension between a mother who wants to shield her daughter and a daughter who must pursue her dream. Those are real and genuine moments, even if they’re under all the weirdness.

I couldn’t help but ask myself what Superstar would have been like if it were more realistic. A biopic can be boring to some, but when you’re telling the life of an actual human being—particularly a person who is as rebellious as Tamara—it gives you something to hold onto.

Instead, Superstar is proud of its forays into individuality. The humour is in a state of transition. Some parts of the scenes try to be funny or clever but turn out to sound artificial or contrived. The dramatic scenes are marred because we’re perpetually being pulled into weird or dream sequences.

It’s a pity because there is a compelling narrative that runs throughout all the surrealism. Tamara’s ascendancy to the peaks of Spanish media is an accomplishment, her metamorphosis into Yurena, and her struggle to carve out her place in a world that devalued her—those are all deserving of a more linear and respectful treatment.

Netflix Superstar Series Review: Summing Up

I personally was fascinated with Superestar at times, but in the end, it became frustrating to watch. I love the creativity, but I would have loved the show to have made me comprehend and connect with Tamara’s life in a deeper manner. If you like experimental TV or appreciate visually innovative storytelling, you might like Netflix’s Superstar. It is certainly a strange show that attempts to toy with the conventions of the typical celebrity biography. But if you are the kind of person who likes more conventional, emotionally resonant biography, you may not like it.

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