10 The premiere of the film Obsessió has coincided in our corner of the world with a remarkable –sexual?– controversy. A politician over 30 years old has finally been expelled from a national-populist political party because he maintains affective relations with a minor, even though the girl is already 16 years old, the minimum for sexual consent (remember that it used to be 14). Between the two there was a student-teacher relationship, which further complicates matters.There has been a tremendous uproar on social media, motivated by the need or not to position ourselves as a society in the midst of a relationship of this kind, or whether it is enough to simply stick to the law and accept the bond once it is admitted that the girl's consent is valid. But there is a too obvious confusion of terms here: the law speaks of sexual consent, and that relationships from then on can be consensual and, therefore, there is no longer a crime of abuse. But what does this have to do with a relationship? We don't even know, nor do we have to know, if there has ever been sex between the two, apart from the love story ("sentimental relationship", says the professor in a public statement) that has motivated the fuss.Although we can assume so, the sexual act takes a backseat, because what is interesting to evaluate is to what extent a man over 30 plays fair when he seduces a woman – a woman? – so young, who moreover was ‘educating’. To start evaluating this is not for puritans or snobs, nor for moralists heirs of the Church, which has always married people even younger. The point is that love can be very beautiful, but life is long, and everything that seems like love to us, in the end may just be emotional dependence, and even abuse, which, beyond being criminally punishable, cannot be overlooked when people are not very aware of what they are doing or feeling. The writer Vanessa Springora has made an admirable book about all this (The Consent); it is the same ‘in love’ girl who then turns to society and asks: Why did you allow me to?In the recently released film Obsession, we see something similar: a boy makes a girl fall in love with him with a magic spell, and from then on he can't get rid of her. The film is becoming a phenomenon, and I'm not surprised, because it's magnificently shot and acted, especially by the actress (Inde Navarrete) who plays the 'in love' girl. The consummation of the young fool's sex-affective dream transforms into a major horror story, because there is nothing more terrifying than a forced love. Or a true love in a world where it no longer has a place, or when the lover doesn't know how to live up to what is given to him. Some have wanted to see in the film also an allegory of forced consent, or of those relationships based on deceit, or of the emotional dependence of young loves, which are always painfully unhealthy. And who is the monster, then, the fatally 'in love' girl or the one who has forced this love with wicked arts?

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