Spanish Film Festival: Un Amor

Spanish Film Festival: Un Amor

Spanish Film Festival: Un Amor Rating

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Un Amor is a delirious dive into the torment experienced by a young woman who walked away from the stress of her work interpreting the tragic stories of refugees and moved to La Escapa, a small village deep in the Spanish countryside, only to be thrust into a story almost as horrible as the ones she was running away from.

Multi-award-winning and multi-lingual Spanish director Isabel Coixet co-wrote and directed this searing drama, told with interspersed flashbacks to the horrors of her previous work, paralleling her descent into indecency.

The cinematography is often breathtaking, showing the scope and beauty of the region and vividly bringing life to Nat’s mixed emotions. The villagers’ characterisations, foibles, intrigues, and veiled love triangles are all treated with gusto. There’s a delightful smorgasbord of humanity on display.

In a dilapidated house with an abused dog thrust into her care, thirty-year-old Natalia, or Nat (Laia Costa), faces overt hostility and sexist micro-aggressions from her landlord and covert hostility from nearly all her neighbours. Initially wooed by a slightly older man who demonstrates an artistic sensitivity with stained glass, she demurely dismisses his overtures.

Spanish Film Festival: Un Amor

Then after an extraordinary encounter, Natalia reluctantly gives in to an awkward illicit proposal from her brutish neighbour Andreas (Hovik Keuchkerian) so as to have her dwelling refurbished somewhat and made into a more liveable space. In so doing, she succumbs to a passion that punishes her and causes her to see who she really is.

The film is based on Sara Mesa’s bestselling novel of the same name. The Spanish newspaper El País named it Spain’s 2020 book of the year. Un Amor has been described as a bittersweet and striking exploration of gender roles, love, obsession, and desire.

It deftly deals with some eternally fundamental and gripping questions that have plagued humanity. What is love? Are we sexual in nature? It’s a disturbingly frank look at the dynamics of gender politics and sex as a commodity.

John Holland of Screen Daily, a website providing a real-time view of the film industry, said the film was sometimes “redolent of Coixet’s very best work.” Guy Lodge of Variety, a website featuring entertainment news and reviews, considered the film to be a return to form for Coixet.

In two top ten lists of Spanish films, it ranked 2nd (El Español) and 10th (Mondosonoro).

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Spanish Film Festival: Upon Open Sky

Spanish Film Festival: Upon Open Sky

Spanish Film Festival: Upon Open Sky Rating

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Upon Open Sky is a Mexican crime drama set in the 90s, mainly in the Coahuila desert, an arid expanse covering much of the border between Mexico and the US. It is based on a screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga, the Mexican novelist and screenwriter who received an award at Cannes for his The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in 2005. The film is the directorial debut of his two children, Mariana and Santiago Arriaga.

In a prelude, we see a father and son embarking on a hunting trip. They are full of anticipation, and the boy relishes the time with his father. An emphatically final accident happens. The screen goes black. The sound tells us the other vehicle drove off.

Fast forward to two years later, we see two upper-middle-class teenage boys, Salvador (Theo Goldin) and his older brother Fernando (Maximo Hollander), still grieving the loss of their father. They live with their mother, stepfather, and stepsister, Paula (Federica Garcia).

Short-fused Fernando haunts the local wrecker’s yard, doing amateur forensic reconstructions of car accidents, an obsession he is unable to shake, along with the anger that fuels his search for the driver of the truck that collided with his father’s car. He locates the man and persuades his younger brother to go on a revenge road trip. Salvador, who was with his father in the accident, says he does not remember what happened.

The trauma of the accident becomes so heavy they decide to go to the place where it occurred to find an explanation for what happened. The parents leave on a holiday, and the siblings take off to the Mexican border.

Joined by the pretty, telenovela-obsessed Paula, who they barely know, and her boyfriend, Eduardo, initially oblivious to the brothers’ intentions, the siblings embark on a tense journey into adulthood, which has them come to terms with losing their father. Paula has deep pockets and expensive tastes, so the boys find themselves travelling in style.

Spanish Film Festival: Upon Open Sky

She seems unfazed by the discovery that her stepbrothers have stolen her father’s gun. The siblings are withdrawn, and Paula’s motivations are opaque. For each, the trip means something different: for Fernando, revenge, and for Salvador, closure. Eduardo sees it as an opportunity to sleep with Paula. She may just be bored or want to fit in with her newly found family.

Paula’s mother died when she was a baby, so there are no memories or ghosts. Paula appears spoiled and only looks alive when teasing her brothers. Halfway through the film, we find Paula is not just a sexual ornament; she is an important part of the story, with enough weight to provoke reactions.

Theo Goldin deserves a special note as Salvador. He is convincing, quiet, and thoughtful for most of the film. Despite being the youngest, he shows better judgment and acts with poise.

Upon Open Sky is a road movie and a coming-of-age. Sometimes, it is a Western, shown by the concealed revolver, the van they drive and the clothes they wear. The landscape is shown in panorama and small details. The score from Ludovico Einaudi aids in giving a mood to the unforgiving backdrop. This is a powerful thriller imbued with youthful rage that questions forgiveness and love within the family as each character learns about themselves and the world.

The action and relationships are also on the move while on the road. The outcome is not overdone, which is uncommon in Mexican cinema. It’s as if the directors discover, along with the siblings, that maturity comes not with revenge but self-restraint.

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Spanish Film Festival: Jokes and Cigarettes

Jokes and Cigarettes

Jokes and Cigarettes Rating

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Director David Trueba says of his film Jokes and Cigarettes – “This is a film about humour, and about survival. Eugenio was one of the most popular comedians of the Transition. Everything about his appearance was at odds with humour: a serious man, with no gestures, hiding behind tinted glasses and a black shirt, with a lit cigarette behind a microphone, who would be the one to make a whole country laugh. But… what was hidden inside him?”

Directed and written by multiple Goya Award winner David Trueba and starring David Verdaguer in a virtuoso performance, Jokes and Cigarettes tells the story of the famous Catalan comedian Eugenio, the chain-smoking comedian known for his deadpan delivery, his smoked glasses and his trademark total black attire. It concentrates on his formative years as a comedian during the 60s and 70s, where he became a fixture on the TV sets of every Spaniard.

Barcelona, late 1960s. A young jeweller named Eugenio meets Conchita on a bus and it is smitten. Eugenio learns to play guitar to follow Conchita a singer, and, despite stage fright, they start to play together. When Conchita leaves Barcelona for two weeks, she convinces Eugenio to perform solo and Eugenio becomes a phenomenon in the city’s underground comedy scene. Helped by Conchita, he creates his comedy ego–the dark glasses, the black shirt, the barstool, the cigarettes and the high ball glass–the character that would soon become an unexpected success.

The producer Edmon Roch recalls, “I remember when I went to see the comedian who made people laugh before he’d even opened his mouth. I was ten years old, and I could see my parents laughing their heads off at the sight of this tall man sitting on a stool, stretching out his every movement with an unperturbed gesture before he started to speak. There was a liturgy, an expectation, a palpable ritual. Later, when I discovered Buster Keaton, I thought of Eugenio’s unflappable face, he’s still present in our memory and his humour lives on.”

Jokes and Cigarettes

David Verdaguer delivers a totally believable performance as Eugenio. His deadpan delivery as a comedian is perfection contrasting with his love for his wife and son. I particularly enjoyed the scene where he drops in on his son’s school concert, surprising his son who is doing an impersonation of his father’s comedy act.

Carolina Yuste is compassionate, loving and also totally believable as Eugenio’s wife, Conchita. Her early scenes with Verdaguer are a joy to watch and her death scene is a tearjerker.
Beautifully photographed, Jokes and Cigarettes also has a magical soundtrack of 60s and 70s Catalan music.

Jokes and Cigarettes is a film about humour and survival that explores what was hiding behind that serious man that made a whole country laugh!

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A Singular Crime – Spanish Film Festival

A Singular Crime / Un Crimen Argentino is a 2022 thriller based on the 2002 Reynaldo Sietecasebook of the same name. It’s inspired by a true story occurring in 1980 Rosario, Argentina during the “Dirty War” military dictatorship.

The book was a best seller, and now the film leaves audiences just as intrigued as they try to solve the crime alongside the protagonists. It is airing at the 2023 Spanish Film Festival and is a must-watch for any who love a mystery.

Unlike the book, A Singular Crime primarily follows around two court clerks, Antonio González Rivas (Nicolás Francella) and Carlos Torres (Matías Mayer), alongside the judge’s secretary, Maria Bussato (Malena Sanchez), as they try to solve the case of a missing businessman named Gabriel “Turco” Samid (Pablo Tolosa).

Given the immense corruption of the Dirty War era Argentinian military, the clerks must race to solve the mystery before the police can close the investigation, dodging their interference at each step. The audience follow Rivas and Torres down rabbit-hole after rabbit-hole trying to figure out what happened to Samid, piecing together the last night before his disappearance and who could have demanded the one-million-dollar ransom.

They discover the struggle of solving the mystery when all of the authority figures sing the tune of “no body, no crime.” Fans of the book get to enjoy this story from another perspective, rather than following the story of the perpetrator. 

Director Lucas Combina definitely evokes the imagery of a Hollywood film set in the same time period, especially with the lighting and cinematography. It allows foreign viewers to feel familiar with the art style, appealing to a larger demographic. Francella and Mayer provide excellent performances but personally, Dario Grandinetti as Mariano Marquez was the standout star for me. 

If you’re attending the Spanish Film Festival in 2023, don’t miss A Singular Crime / Un CrimenArgentino. The festival is celebrating its 25th anniversary and is showing 32 films, not to mention highlighting the women in Spanish and Latin cinema. 

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