Tag: Spanish

Fire Will Come (O Que Arde)

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This a sensory experience. One that you feel with your skin. Feel the heat, feel the fog, feel the humidity. Director Oliver Laxe and his crew received fire training in order to join the Galician forest brigade as they battle the very large fires that routinely castigate the Northeastern nation of Spain. A very audacious feat. You will be caught right in the middle of hell, surrounded by collapsing trees and gigantic flames. Laxe didn’t even know whether his film equipment would survive. Fortunately for us, it did. Despite this, plus the fact that the actors use their real names, Fire Will Come is not a documentary.

The bulky, rough-looking and yet somehow gentle and affable Amador has just left prison after a two-year stint for arson. He returns to his mother Benedicta, a bespectacled and petite octogenarian, so wrinkly that her mouth has shrunk and lips are hardly visible, donning a old rag dress and dirty trainers. Despite her age and small frame, Benedicta’s presence is momentous. The actress delivers an extravagantly demure performance. She is delighted to have her son back, welcoming him with a concise “Are you hungry?”

The story takes place in the deep Galician countryside, a region of Spain famous for non-savoury weather. There’s snow and constant rain. Once the soils dries up, comes the titular fire. It’s never entirely clear why Amador set fire to the forests, or even whether he is indeed guilty. We learn that he has a profound dislike of eucalyptus trees because they have “kilometres-long roots that suffocate other plants”, in his own words. Eucalyptus trees are not indigenous to Galicia, but they nowadays they are grown across the nation for their timber. We can only speculate that Amador became a pyromaniac because he wished to rid his land of the invasive species.

The film is entirely spoken in Galician language. A remarkable feature, absent from another recent and equally superb Spanish film set in Galicia, Isabel Coixet’s Elisa and Marcela. The director Laxe is the child of Galician immigrants, just like myself. In fact, this was the first time in my life I watched a film in my father’s native tongue. The depiction of the Galician countryside is extremely accurate. The verdant hills, the ancient stone houses, the old-fashioned iron ovens, the small-scale cattle ranching (Benedicta has about five cows with whom she has a very tender relationship). And, of course, the menacing fires (in 2011, more than 2,000 fires burnt nearly 2% of the Galicia’s territory). The characters (mostly peasants) are played by locals, and they too are very convincing. Laxe conducted the casting himself.

The lyricism of Fire Will Come is conspicuous. The contrasting images of Benedicta walking through the woods before and after the fire are astounding. There’s Tarkovsky everywhere: the cows of Andrei Rublev (1966) the exuberant green fields of Stalker (1979), the foggy vastness of Nostalghia (1983) and the house on fire of The Sacrifice (1986). Plus the the meditative pace of all of his films. The operatic soundtrack is sombre and dramatic, with songs by Vivaldi and Haas. Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne is also played to great effect during a short car ride. There’s also a very disturbing sequence of a wounded horse running emerging from the arson. A sordid and painful reminder of the unforgiving might of fire.

All in all, this if the perfect combination of sound and imagery. A breathtaking movie. Literally.

Fire Will Come premiered at the BFI London Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It won the Jury Prize of the Un Certain Regard strand of the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, a much deserved accolade. In cinemas Friday, March 20th. On Curzon Home Cinema on Friday, April 3rd (following cancellation of theatrical release due to the coronavirus pandemic).

The Candidate (El Reino)

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Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Candidate is a political thriller, and as with many political thrillers, it is a little too long. But it does produce a juicy effigy, conspiratorial in division, to make for a strong night’s viewing, much of it genuinely thrilling and affecting at points. Manuel (Antonio de la Torre), a charismatic, louche politician finds himself the victim behind a leak involving a corruption scandal, which threatens to break his entire party and decimate a drowning man politically.

Conversations infused with cigarettes light the fiery backstage conversation. Manuel is threatened with thinly veiled references to his daughter’s Nati (Maria de Nati) well-being, causing moments of dubious self-reflection and introspection. Protracted smears seemingly chase the downtrodden man, ably and brilliantly articulated by the star of the seminal The Fury of a Patient Man. Antonio de la Torre, magnetic in sneer, smirk and sinewy appearance, divides charm, charisma with low lying latent violent demeanours.

Asking for a receptionist’s book, Manuel walks the thin line between commanding and threatening, shades of Joe Pesci’s past performances alarming the audiences. He’s a vigorous, virile lead and though the final third makes the unlikely leap action hero formula, Manuel is a prescient presence, presiding the pain, panache and poetry a man in his position and disposition must conquer. The silence looks good on de la Torre, yet the valiant speeches he gives exude the right level of character and charisma for the script’s valedictorian purposes.

Causes and causeways call on the Madrid pathways, leading to one of the film’s more explosive scenes. Manuel exits a taxi, towering under the towers which have serviced his wallet for decades. What follows is the film’s centre-piece, a tense talkative throwback to the Spanish films of the 1990s such as All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar, 1999) and Butterfly’s Tongue (Jose Luis Cuerda, 1999), punchy in spirit and word, clenched fists dropped for worded hits, the barbed threat more realised than the physical punch.

Ana Wagener’s angry insults match Manuel’s finger pointed barbs, both decrying each other for their hypocrisies. Two political masterminds, mixed in their ministerial duties and demonstrations, drench one another in aggressive angular answers. The construct of human maturity displaying the actions of infantile immaturity, this telling moment shows how petty the political performances can shape left to their personal devices.

And yet the run time simply drags the audience’s attention at points, at times taking from one of Antonio de la Torre’s most rewarding performances. It needs splicing from the unnecessary amount of exposition, for a punchier product. A near-perfect film.

The Candidate (aka The Realm) is in cinemas and digital HD on Friday, August 2nd.

Elisa and Marcela (Elisa y Marcela)

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This is a film about two women in love, and directed by a female. And this is cinema at its most universal. It will move you regardless of whether you are a male or a female, Spanish or British, progressive or conservative, or anything else. This is the real-life tale of two humans being who fell in love and took draconian measures in order in order to remain together, against all odds.

Elisa (Natalia de Molina) first meets Marcela (Greta Fernandez) on the first day of school in 1898. They are immediately fascinated with each other. Their tender affection gradually develops into a full-on homosexual relation. Marcela’s parents intervene and send Marcela away to a boarding school in Madrid for three years. The two women, however, resume their romance as soon as Marcela returns. The residents of the parish of Couso too realise that their share more than a friendship. Elisa is branded a “marimacho”, and the couple become increasingly despised and isolated.

The two women come up with a very audacious escape plan. Elisa disappears, with Marcela claiming that she migrated to Cuba with some distant relatives. Then suddenly Elisa’s cousin “Mario” surfaces and marries Marcela. Mario is in reality a cross-dressed version of Elisa, with a hand-drawn moustache et al. Marcela becomes pregnant and tells locals that Mario is the father (we never learn who made Marcela pregnant). She justifies striking resemblance between Elisa and “Mario” on the fact that they are first-degree relatives. In reality, the two women intend to migrate to Argentina and restart their lives in a place where they will not get harassed. But locals suspect that Mario is Elisa. A local mob of vigilantes attack their house. Their plan goes terribly awry.

I can’t tell you too much more about the actual story without spoiling it for you. I should just tell you that they find kind and generous people on their way, and that they get a helping hand from another non-conventional couple. A reminder that solidarity and empathy can change the world. What these people do for them will put a smile on your face.

The countryside of Galicia in Northeastern Spain is depicted in abundant and accurate detail. The stone houses and bridges, the octopuses, the accordion, the Celtic dresses are all present. Plus the film deals with the subject of emigration (Elisa and Marcela want to emigrate to Argentina). Galicia is the region of Spain most closely associated with emigration. Half a million Galicians currently live abroad (a quarter of the population of the region). My father is one of such emigrants. The only thing that’s strangely and entirely absent from the film is the local language Galician. Elisa and Marcela is entirely spoken in Castilian. Neither my father nor my late grandparents spoke such language.

Isabel Coixet’s latest drama excels in technical wizardry. The sharp black and white photography gently morphs into grainy images and real photographs taken at the beginning of the century. The wedding picture of the real Marcela and Mario/Elisa appears briefly. Such visual ingeniousness might ring bells with those who saw the Portuguese film Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012), another masterpiece of black and white Iberian cinema, which also deals with emigration and a seemingly impossible love. Tabu won the Alfred Bauer Prize for “new perspectives on cinematic art” when it premiered at the Berlinale 7 years ago, and Elisa and Marcela could achieve a the similar feat.

The dramatic elements are also outstanding. The chemistry between the two leads is effervescent. Or explosive even. And who doesn’t love some 19th century Lesbian action with octopuses (no pun intended) and even some very peculiar bonding? Despite its sexual audacity, Elisa and Marcela never slips into the vulgar and absurd. It’s purely carnal and sensual (says a gay man).

The film wraps up with a reminder that gay marriage became legal in Spain in 2005 (more than 100 years after Marcela and Elisa departed), and also that homosexual love is still punishable by death in many countries around the world.

Elisa and Marcela showed at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It was our editor’s favourite to win the Golden Bear, in a year with a very strong selection. This did not come to fruition. Had this happened, a lot of eyebrows would have been raised. That’s because the film was produced by Netflix, and this means that it will never see a theatrical release. This is indeed regrettable. Elisa and Marcela deserves to be seen at the cinema., Perhaps not surprisingly, the Netflix logo triggered some members of the audience to boo. The film made available on Netflix in June.

Miss Dali

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This is a film to be watched if you want a historical account of the painter’s life in the style of a cozy fireside chat. Much of this history is narrated by his sister Anna Maria Dali (Sian Philliips) to her old friend Maggie (Claire Bloom) over the course of one day. Maggie asks her old friend leading questions and Anna-Maria dutifully supplies us with the answers. Both Bloom and Phillips are exceptional actresses and give colour to a rather stern dialogue.

The events of Dali’s life are recounted to us as a memory, often in black-and-white flashbacks. He is played by Joan Carmona, who does a good job at portraying the painter’s eccentricities of manner. The younger Anna Maria is played with charm by Eulalia Ballart. As a young woman, Anna Maria often modelled for her famous brother. She was often required to pose for the painter looking delightful in front of an open window.

In the flashback scenes Dali’s family are often found (like the older women who narrate the story) to be reading letters from Dali about various events of his life, or leafing through a box of photographs and talking about past anecdotes. Older Anna-Maria tells us that Dali had fierce arguments with surrealists and communists while living in New York. Yet we never see these arguments.

Two thirds of the way through the film we are introduced to another two talking heads Captain Moore (Allan Corduner) and Joanne (Minnie Marx) and then later still by three other women speaking to older Anna-Maria. The presence of these narrators is never explained.

The cinematography (signed by Tito Arcas and Andalu Vila-San-Juan) is rather impressive. The Spanish village of Cadaques – one of Dali’s favourite retreats – is shown in all its splendid beauty. I’m just not entirely sure why the flashbacks suddenly turn to a colour palette partway through the film.

Overall, the film is a little too long at 168 minutes. The actors work very hard to bring the complex dialogue to life, but the narrative is stretched a little too thinly over such an extensive duration.

Miss Dali shows at the 38th Cambridge Film Festival, which takes place between October 25th and November 1st.

Summer 1993 (Estiu 1993)

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HIV first appeared in Spain in 1981. The virus – primarily spread by needle-sharing among drug users in the nascent democracy – peaked in 1997, when there were around 120,000 diagnoses of HIV/AIDS in the adult population. Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón was born in 1986 and is one of many orphans whose parents died from HIV when she was a child. Her debut feature film Summer 1993 is a biographical piece directly inspired by her experiences as a newly-motherless six-year-old girl during a balmy summer in 1990s Catalonia.

The film opens with six-year-old Frida (Laia Artigas) leaving her mother’s apartment in Barcelona to stay in the countryside with maternal uncle Esteve (David Verdaguer), aunt Marga (Bruna Cusí) and four-year-old cousin Anna (Paula Robles). Under the instruction of her grandmother Maria (Isabel Rocatti), Frida regularly leaves offerings and repeats the Lord’s Prayer at a woodside Virgin Mary shrine. All the while, the young girl is trying to make sense of her situation and the multitude of emotions it entails – confusion, grief, anger, to name a few. Equally, her surrogate parents are doing their best to balance sympathy, a fair upbringing, and grandma and grandpa’s regular visits to their bereaved granddaughter.

The narrative unfolds entirely from the perspective of Frida, as hushed fragments of adult conversations are picked up for both her and our dissection. For example, it’s not ever entirely clear that HIV catalysed her mother’s death from pneumonia; this can only be pieced together with a mature understanding of the adult’s behaviour. Cinematographer Santiago Racaj’s camera often assumes the level of Frida and occasionally replicates her point of view. When it frames Frida herself, she is often isolated, whether through her own volition or because of the avoidant actions of those around her. Longer shots are accompanied by handheld moments; altogether, this is a camera that lives in and observes the painstaking realities of its child subject’s world.

Summer 1993 burns slowly across the screen, subtly peeling back the complex and conflicting layers of grief in all their human totality. It never shies away from the more difficult manifestations of family bereavement – the selfishness and spitefulness that can emerge as a way of coping with the sheer injustice of having your life-giver and protector torn away. It lays out an honestly brutal array of emotions, without any place for sentimentality or idealistic happy-endings. The relationship between Frida and her younger cousin Anna provides a perfect example. They play with each other in a recognisably child-like way, yet the power relations between the older and younger girl are omnipresent, sometimes escalating with quite serious consequences.

Simón has spoken about her surprise at the universal appeal of the film, that a story set in Catalonia has led to messages from other people across the globe who were also orphaned after HIV/AIDS-related parental deaths. I would go further and suggest that Summer 1993 captures grief precisely, regardless of age or culture. In fact, to see it depicted through a child’s eyes allows just the right distance to analyse one’s own emotions around death (or those of someone close to you). It’s a fantastic debut and well-deserving of its film festival success.

Summer 1993 is on Mubi on Thursday, January 5th (2023). Also available on other platforms.

Living and Other Fictions (Vivir y Otras Ficciones)

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Disabled people have sex, get over it! This is the central message of this extremely candid and moving Spanish film. Antonio (Antonio Centeno) is a paraplegic writer. Here comes the SHOCKING PART: the man has a libido! Who could’ve imagined it? Disabled people too want to have sex. Obviously the only immoral thoughts in here are with those who think that people with disabilities should refrain from having naughty fun.

Antonio has a habit of hiring prostitutes in order to satisfy his urges, including the beautiful and affectionate Laura. She looks very comfortable at what she does. In many ways, she come across as a loving nurse who puts all of her heart into what she does. And Antonio goes a step further: he turns his very own flat in Barcelona into some sort of brothel where other physically and mentally disabled people too can hire “sexual assistants”. The moments of sexual interaction are very beautiful and sexy, supported by strong performances and meditative a dialogue. There’s absolutely nothing ugly and cringeworthy about sex with those who do not fit the norm. In fact, this is very liberating experience.

Not everyone shares my views, of course, including Antonio’s carer Arantxa (Arantxa Ruiz). She has a very close and intimate relationship with him: she changes his clothes, hoists him in and out of bed, changes his pee bag, and so on. Yet one day she pops in without warning and bumps into him having sex with a prostitute. She later explains that she feels uncomfortable with his “modern life style”. Antonio notes that she’s implying a “higher moral ground” than the sex worker, and comes out in defence of the prostitute: “If it wasn’t for the whores, maybe I wouldn’t have any pleasure”.

Parallel to Antonio’s story is Pepe’s (Pepe Rovira). He was recently released from a psychiatric hospital for stealing taxis in order to work and make money, before returning them to the very same spot where he took them from. This unusual story is a reference to Jo Sol’s 2005 film Taxi Thief (also starred by Rovira). Antonio and Pepe become good friends, and apparently bond over their willingness to challenge the established normativity, even if in very different ways. Pepe is also a musician, and his fiery strings and emotionally-laden Flamenco lament infuse the film with passion.

It’s difficult to come across such level of sexual frankness in British cinema, which is used to sanitised bodies and sex. There is no prudery in Living and Other Fictions. It feels a lot like a documentary but in reality it’s fictionalised account of Jo and Antonio’s creative and political inclinations. Antonio himself co-directed two years ago a far more provocative film dealing with the same topic, with the far from subtle title Yes, We Fuck. His character in Living and Other Fictions explains that his body is “a pack of dynamite for the walls of normality”, and talks about Marxism through the “body revolution”. The message is clear: you’d be crazy to the embrace the orthodox “normality” and not to enjoy your irreplaceable and fascinating body, gorgeous and marvellous in its imperfections!

You can view Living and Other Fictions online and for free until December 17th, as part of the ArteKino Festival – just click here and turn the volume up!

Donkeyote

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This bucolic documentary by Spanish filmmaker by Chico Pereira follows the footsteps/hoofsteps of the elderly Spaniard Manolo and his lifelong companion Gorrión (“Sparrow”) the Donkey, and their monotonous life, roaming the countryside of Southern Spain. Retired and with a strong bond to his animals, he dreams of doing a ‘long walk’ someday – this turns out to be none other than the 2,200-mile-long Trail of Tears in the American West, a route indigenous people were forced to walk after their involuntary removal from the Mississippi River.

One of his daughters, Paca, knows he has been planning for the event for a long time. Fearful for his physical health, she raises her concern about his lack of technological savviness, which could be a problem in case he needs ask for help during such a long trip. Their interaction is fairly amusing and endearing. She knows how ill-judged and stubborn her old man can be, so she decides to step in order to help him.

The idea of shipping a donkey across the Atlantic seems like a long shot, but Paca convinces her father about making an advert on video selling his idea to a company. His search for a sponsor is one of the many heart-warming moments of the feature. When he blindly sets off to the horizon with Gorrión and one of his dogs, the spectator does not know what is going to happen. But we do believe in Manuel’s resolute ambition and his undertaking of this trip, and that is truly inspiring to watch.

Despite the director’s attempt to make the journey feel quite idyllic, ultimately we are just watching a 73-year-old man’s willpower and desire to keep on ‘walking’ and ‘moving forward’, being the wanderer that he was always supposed to be. Manuel is here to teach our increasingly sedentary society: set yourself on path and stand firm on your journey, wherever it might take you.

Donkeyote showed in August 2017 at DokuFest, in Kosovo, when this piece was originally written. It showed in September 2017 as part of the Open City Docs Film Festival in London. It’s out in UK cinema on Friday, October 26th 2018.

Click here for our review of another touching film about an old man taking his beloved and very large pet to another continent.

The Shepherd (El Pastor)

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In the first few minutes of The Shepherd, we follow a man in his daily routine of waking up in the early hours of countryside Spain. We see feed his dog, have a shower, prepare his coffee, roll and smoke a ciggie, and leave ready for the workday ahead. If only the film provided that kind of awakening…

This languid drama, directed by Spanish director Jonathan Cenzual Burley, tells the story of its titular character, Anselmo (Miguel Martín), a 55-year-old who lives in the middle of nowhere tending sheep and who likes to live a lifestyle that makes most of the most destitute B&B look like the Ritz. He’s full of praise of the simple life and yet, like the late Abbas Kiarostami’s simplicity, we can’t really put a finger on what he means.

We learn about his contempt for television shows and his fondness of old ways of consuming books: in the middle of the Amazon age, he’s more into the good libraries of yore. He doesn’t have friends, except for the sweet Concha (Maribel Iglesias), whom he vaguely seems to care for. Plus there’s his dog.

His life changes when two real estate developers appear from nowhere and make “an offer he can’t refuse” – pretty much the same wording as in The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972), except that it’s in Spanish. They want his land in exchange for virtually “anything”. Bear with me on this one: they offer a life of luxury to a guy who doesn’t care to buy a TV set. Of course, he refuses. Of course, there are other people with interests in the deal. Hell cometh.

If this sounds a bit familiar, it’s because it probably is. The feature plays like a less stylish version of Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2016), minus the social commentary and profound character development. Unlike the Brazilian film, The Shepherd doesn’t go too deep into the reasons of his resistance. Anselmo just comes across as a plain Luddite hostile to any sort of change.

The similar fate befalls upon his antagonists: Julián (Alfonso Mendiguchia), Paco (Juan Luis Sara) and Manoli (Maite Iglesias) are flat characters, archetypes of despair, wrath and greed. The script even tries to give them narrative arcs in its final third, when it seems to realise it postponed the action for too long, but these attempts feel like afterthoughts and so does the ending – which I won’t spoil here. However, to a degree, it shows Cenzual’s talent that fact that he’s able to carry on the 100-minute film with such a crew of despicable characters.

At least the cinematography makes up for the shortcomings of the story, with a lot of good shots of the Spanish wild and the exquisite sky vistas setting up the scope of the place and the imminence of danger, most of it done during the “golden hour”, resulting in images that resemble Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978).

The Shepherd is out in cinemas Friday, June 2nd.