It took nearly 10 years for Paco Roca’s album, “Wrinkles,” to be translated into English, and several more after that for it to make it Stateside. And this was following a film adaptation in 2011. Demonstrating their consistently sharp sense for finding interesting comic stories, Fantagraphics brought the story over in 2016 in a handsome hardcover with a news translation by Erica Mena. “Wrinkles” is a superb example of how the comics medium is able to depict empathy, poignancy, and earnestness in this sometimes hilarious, sometimes devastating, but always human story.
Written and Illustrated by Paco RocaCover by Paco Roca
Translated by Erica MenaTwo elderly residents of an assisted living facility employ clever tricks to mask their ongoing deterioration, culminating in a riotous nighttime breakout. With echoes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Cocoon, Paco Roca’s acclaimed graphic novel squarely addresses the fears of growing old in a work of humor, humanity, and sensitivity. Wrinkles was adapted into a successful animated film in 2011 and has won numerous international awards.
Emilio isn’t able to control his memories. Random scenes and sequences from his past, from when he was a manager at a band, flare up at the most inopportune times. Recently, they’ve even started to have an effect on his relationship with the present. Unable to take care of him anymore, his family checks him into a nursing home, partly to be able to get on with their own lives, partly to allow him to interact with more people his age. Roca slowly introduces Emilio to a cast of characters who are all at various stages of being able to care for themselves. (He also introduces the dreaded second floor, where the old folks end up who have no control over their own facilities, creating a sort of dreaded area they all hope to avoid.) Maybe the most rambunctious and energetic one of them is Miguel, Emilio’s roommate, who’s only too happy to help anyone out for a small fee.
Emilio goes to great lengths to try to separate himself from the other guests, but it isn’t long before he, too, starts to fall into the routine of naps, meds, and meals. “There’s a senior sleeping in every corner,” Emilio says. Things take a drastic turn when Emilio discovers he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and everything in the book, its world and its life, becomes more precious, almost more sacred. Even at its most depressing, “Wrinkles” never loses sight of its humanity.
None of Roca’s jokes come at the expense of the old people, either; they do, however, provide plenty of material. (Though one element that pulled me out was the old people calling each other “seniors.” I’m not entirely sure if this is due to the translation or if it was in the original Spanish, but the phrase “seniors” seems a little too politically correct for this cast.) The calisthenics scene, for instance, where the group tosses a ball back and forth while trying to deal with their individual ailments is particularly memorable. He manages to catch other great small instances out of the mundanity of their senior living lives, and though the actions are small, they feel profound.
Roca’s illustrations are rich. He keeps the lines thin but the compositions open, knowing when to load the background with detail and when to let a character take up all the space. He colors the material warmly, with plenty of comfortable yellows and other golden hues to give the place a sense of homeliness and entrapment. In fact, it’s his palette that gives “Wrinkles’s” settings their sensibilities, from the relaxation of the sun room, the practicality of the dining hall, the anxiety of the library — where Emilio can no longer remember what he was reading — to the mysterious of his bedroom, where he suspects Miguel might be robbing him. Roca’s instinct for what scenes take place where help build a real connection with the material and what the characters are going through. And when one sensibility is upset — like when Emilio discovers he has Alzheimer’s in the dining room — it truly evokes that trauma and discomfort.
Continued belowPerhaps Roca’s most touching and fitting use of the medium comes when he employs flashbacks. Apart from the opening, which more of a punchline anyway, “Wrinkles” never dives too deep into an actual flashback scene. Instead, he throws in a panel or two showing us the places where these old people are at in their imaginations. This can range from the gorgeous and affirming, for instance the woman who dreams she’s on a train to Istanbul to meet her husband, to the heartbreaking, like when Emilio arrives at the home and flashes back to his first day of school, where he was ridiculed for wanting his mother.
And then there’s how he slowly takes more and more out of the image as Emilio’s dementia progresses, leaving us trying to remember what parts used to be there.
Roca never condemns nor proclaims the nursing home. Neither does he shy away from why these people ended up there, forget the limitations of their age, or ignore that impending sense of death and infirmity constantly hanging over them. At the same time, however, he shows that this can still be a new life for all of them, that there is still plenty of time for them to build relationships and grow. This may be Emilio’s story, but Miguel definitely has the most empathetic arc.
Though it may have taken far too long for “Wrinkles” to become available to English-speaking audiences, this remains an album well worth a look. Paco Roca uses his imagery to help connect us even further with his characters, achieving these emotions and relationships that would be far more difficult in another medium. A long story set in an old folks’ home doesn’t outwardly sound like the most engaging work, but with Paco Roca’s delivery, it’s captivating.
You can buy Wrinkles
