Archive for the ‘Spain’ Category

More than blood ties

Three intersecting stories brought together under the themes of love, adoption and motherhood are at the core of Mother and Child (2009), the latest film from Rodrigo García (Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (1999)).

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A world underwater

Jacques Perrin’s new film Océans (2009) deserves wide-screen viewing, and I now regret that I never saw his 2001 Peuple Migrateur (Winged Migration) in the cinema, writes Gerald Loftus.

For viewers requiring documentary purity, Roger Ebert’s comment on Perrin’s previous film still holds, this time for Océans: “Facts are not the purpose of Winged Migration. It wants to allow us to look, simply look, at birds–and that goal it achieves magnificently. There are sights here I will not easily forget.”

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Digging up Franco’s Spain

Honour thy father and mother. José-Luis Peñafuerte does this in the most effective way possible in his documentary Los caminos de la memoria (2009). The son of Spanish exiles, this Brussels-born film maker has been on-topic since his very first TV documentary, Niños (2001), about the orphans of the Spanish Civil War, writes Gerald Loftus.

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A right, but not an obligation

Alejandro Amenábar (The Others (2001), Agora (2009)) took on the daunting challenge of the life story of Spaniard Ramón Sampedro (Javier Bardem), a former sailor who was tetraplegic for 28 years, and who successfully fought in court for his right to euthanasia.

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Oceans apart

Spanish writer/director Gerardo Olivares’ film 14 Kilómetros (2007) tells us how far the Moroccan coastline is separated from Spain, writes Gerald Loftus. Tantalizingly close, visible from your window whether you’re in Tangier on the African side or Tarifa on the European coast. But if you are one of the thousands of desperate African migrants who has spent your last cent crossing the Sahara getting to the jump off point, you are not going to let 14km get in your way. Or you are going to die trying, as thousands do.

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Back in the darkness

Catalonian and Spanish directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza are back on the scene, with their sequel to the sublime, terrifying [Rec] (2007). So, does the second slice of P.O.V. pandemonium match up to the first?

Well, yes and no. As already said, the same directors reunite (and Picturenose had a chance to chat with Paco recently), with Manu Díez taking writing duties along with Balagueró this time around.

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Tough tricks

Writer-director Fernando León de Aranoa (Los lunes al sol (2002), Caminantes (2001)) here turns his gaze towards a world far removed from that of Pretty Woman (1990) – the grubby, frequently sickening lives inhabited by sex workers, where hope is a truly precious commodity, a different currency from the prices that women haggle for their own bodies.

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A life (and death) less ordinary

Spanish director Manuel Huerga (Diario de un astronauta (2008)) is brave enough to provide a frank and unflinching account of one of his country’s darkest periods, namely the 1970s dictatorship of Francisco Franco and the life and times of anarchist and bank-robber Salvador Puig Antich (Daniel Brühl), whose execution in 1974 (based on distinctly dubious evidence provided by the Spanish police after one of their number dies (accidentally?) in a shoot-out involving Antich) ushered in a period of extended civil unrest that brought Spain to democracy.

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Stolen chances

A slick, well-made effort from Spanish director Jaime Marques (El Paraíso perdido (1999)) – writers Juan Ibáñez and Enrique López Lavigne offer an insight into the life and mind of Álex (Juan José Ballesta), a child abandoned by his kleptomaniac mother after she’d taught him how to ‘lift’ from passers-by, and the relationship he forms, now as a young man (with an uncanny resemblance to Matt Damon), with attractive middle-class student Sara (María Valverde), whom he promises to teach all that he knows about the fine art of street theft. It goes without saying, of course, that there will be a price to be paid for both star-crossed lovers…

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A hero’s reign in Spain

In the first Picturenose contribution to our new partnership with Cineuropa.org, James finds much to enjoy in a historical biopic starring Viggo Mortensen.

It’s been a while since your faithful correspondent watched a proper historical romp and, what’s more, it’s been longer still since I enjoyed one as much as Alatriste (2006) by Agustín Díaz Yanes (Sin noticias de Dios (2001)).

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