Category: Spanish film

El Topo (1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky)

El Topo means “The Mole.” There’s some opening text explaining it, but it’s not until the film's second half where the title really makes sense. There are some earlier nods—the nameless protagonist (played by director Jodorowsky) starts the film telling his son to bury his childhood. Then later, Jodorowsky will magically find just what he needs by digging in the desert.

At the beginning of the film, Jodorowsky rides around the desert with his naked son; Jodorowsky’s a gunslinger, dressed in all black, teaching his son the trade. They come across a mission where everyone—people and animals—have been disemboweled. It’s actually the least intense El Topo ever gets because everything’s already dead. The subsequent intense scenes, while less gruesome, always have live, suffering victims. El Topo’s big on showing the suffering.

Well, after an almost comic introduction to three bandits—including Alfonso Arau; I spent the next fifty million years and hour and fifty minutes of runtime wondering why Jodorowsky didn’t cast the clearly more charismatic Arau in the lead.

I didn’t know Jodorowsky was the lead until the end credits.

Anyway.

After Jodorowsky and his son dispense with the bandits, they head to another mission where the murderers are encamped, tormenting the neighboring people, raping the priests, and so on. It takes Jodorowsky’s character forever to save anyone. Jodorowsky, the director, has a lot of fun methodically showcasing the violence and terror and the utter buffoonery of those committing it.

Until the second half, when the film time jumps and showcases cruelty and evil—and so long as you skip the rapey stuff–El Topo’s best as an object lesson in how surrealism and farce, with the right sound effects, are indistinguishable.

Jodorowsky’s character will soon abandon his son at the mission once he meets a woman, Mara Lorenzio.

Lorenzio and Jodorowsky will fall in love—according to the dialogue—which he will express by raping her, and she will express by demanding he go kill the four best gunfighters in the desert. Raping her gives her magic powers too, which is never important but does mean it's not all bad, right? Also, Jodorowsky’s character is a Jesus analog, so, you know, there you go.

The film will follow the pair on this quest, quickly adding Paula Romo to the group. Romo’s also a gunfighter, and while Jodorowsky determines how to kill these rivals who’ve all basically given up gunfights, Romo’s out to seduce Lorenzio. Because even though Jodorowsky, the director, likes to male gaze the sapphic, the film goes heavy on the general misogyny too. It’s lower-key on the homophobia, but women are enthusiastically evil. When they’re the worst of the worst, the film dubs them with gruff male voices. Romo’s one of the awful ones.

The quest to defeat the other gunfights eventually drives Jodorowsky’s character to a mental disconnect—he’s basically murdered quirky pacifists—and Romo sees her chance to best him, both in pistols and ladies.

Dramatic resolution and time jump, and now Jodorowsky’s character lives in a hollowed-out mountain, comatose for at least ten years. When he wakes—in a comic scene, but it’s unclear it’s humorous because it’s also the revised ground situation establishing—he discovers he’s living with exiled people with congenital disabilities. The nearby town is big into incest, and whenever a baby comes out with problems, they dump it in the mountain.

Jacqueline Luis plays Jodorowsky’s caretaker—when he was in the coma—who becomes his friend, partner, and lover. As a director, Jodorowsky doesn’t ask much of his actors; if they’re in the movie for a while, it’s be hideous then die; if they’re barely in the movie, it’s usually just suffer and die. Even when someone’s in the film for a sustained period—like new town priest Robert John—they’re still barely in the movie. Medium or long shots, absurdist reaction shots. Not a lot of heavy acting lifting. Especially since everyone’s dubbed anyway.

But Luis is great. As El Topo drags and drags and drags through the second half, Luis is always great. And Jodorowsky, director Jodorowsky, seems to know it and showcases her performance as much as possible.

They’re going to dig a tunnel into the mountain—there was once a tunnel, but the townsfolk closed it—but they need to go into town and do clown shows for money. They have some success; Jodorowsky’s not an untalented physical comedian, and Luis is a little person; the townsfolk eat up their performances. The town’s led by the good Christian ladies of the decency league, who make their slaves fight and then execute them for more laughs. It opens with a branding scene. It's a whole new level of unpleasantness for El Topo and it's a relentless one.

And for a half-hour so, the movie is just the townsfolk being shitty or murderous. Then, the new priest, John, shows up, and the story gets moving again to its inevitable, despondent conclusion.

El Topo’s an unpleasant experience but not really a difficult one. When the Jesus metaphors come through, they come through with a, “Oh, JFC, he’s Jesus!” Every single time. It’s tedious. Jodorowsky’s self-indulgent with the violence, which plays like a commentary on Westerns in the first half, but not the second. There’s a funny spoof of a Spaghetti Western stand-off at the beginning, before El Topo’s too far in, and the spoofing stops for more violence, more absurdity, more cruelty.

If it added up, who knows? It doesn’t add up, though. Pretty photography from Rafael Corkidi. Some of Jodorowsky’s direction is good. It’s never bad—surrealism, like farce, defines its own bar. But there’s nothing to it; you can get pretty landscapes, misogyny, queerphobia, and Jesus analogies in better, shorter movies.

This post is part of the Foreign Western Blogathon hosted by Debbie of Moon in Gemini.

Mondays in the Sun (2002, Fernando León de Aranoa)

At some point, around the halfway point but maybe a little earlier, Mondays in the Sun becomes an endurance spectacle—can director de Aranoa (who co-wrote with Ignacio del Moral) actually keep the film lyrical. There are softly epical arcs in the film, but they get resolved gradually (or not at all) in the final third. There’s no potential for the epical arc because it’s about people in stasis; the film is about these three ship-builders who got protested their fellows getting laid off and ended up getting laid off themselves. Four years later, there’s no progress. They’re past desperation at this point, halfheartedly clinging to various hopes, while (proverbially) clinging to their beers with double fists. Proverbial because no one actually double-fists their drinks. Actually, they’re patient, pensive drinkers.

The film opens with footage of the cops attacking the protesting workers, set to this really calm, really gentle music (by Lucio Godoy). Like everything with Mondays, it’s patient, deliberate. It’s just the militarized cops doing worse and worse things to the protesters. Then it’s over; fade out. de Aranoa and editor Nacho Ruiz Capillas have excellent fade outs in the film. Sometimes they’re for humor, sometimes they’re for tragedy, most times they’re for a combination of both.

There’s an immediate tone change in the subsequent scene, which introduces the primary cast and one of the most frequented locations—José Ángel Egido is taking the ferry to a job interview, Javier Bardem and Luis Tosar are going along too. Tosar’s going along because he too is ostensibly still looking for work. Bardem’s along because he’s got nothing else to do. They raze Egido for being too old for this job he’s trying to get. There’s no exposition setting up the context of the opening protest, we don’t find out it’s four years later until the last half of the movie, there are just single lines of dialogue—friends needling each other—to set up the characters’ ground situations. It helps Bardem’s a talker. He’s able to fill out a lot. And he’s a master needler, so the exposition comes through in some of the responses to his pokes. Mondays has a phenomenal script. de Aranoa’s direction is excellent, sure, but it’s the script. The script and the actors.

Bardem’s a ladies man—he spends his days screwing and daydreaming, avoiding paying a fine for a broken streetlight in the protest. It’s not an expensive fine, it’s the principle. All Bardem has at this point, the film explores, is that adherence to his principles, which aren’t so much tested as tempted; Bardem’s got his lines and he doesn’t cross them, but it takes a while make them all out.

Tosar’s the married one. Well, both he and Egido and supporting pal Celso Bugallo are all married but Tosar’s the one whose wife (Nieve de Medina) gets the film’s attention. She works at the tuna factory, standing twelve-hour shifts, no longer able to feel her legs. Tosar’s at home, “job hunting” with the boys, or at the bar. Of everyone, he’s got the most epical arc in the film, at least the implication of it. Because as the runtime progresses, Tosar’s drinking comes home with him. He adores de Medina, but given their situation—they only ever see each other in passing—it becomes a nuisance to her. Because it’s been four years.

Then there’s Egido, who’s trying to competent with men twenty years younger for office jobs he’s not really qualified for. He’s got a somewhat epical arc—he’s adapting to the job interviews, he’s trying to learn new things—but told in the most lyrical way of anything in the film. Like I said, the script is amazing. Egido’s got a wife and family at home, so he’s in a much different situation. There’s also the implication he didn’t blow through his severance like Bardem definitely did and Tosar seems to have done. He’s the responsible one. And it’s breaking him. Mondays is an exploration of dignity, resolve, and stubbornness. When they’re confused, when they’re called for, when they’re not.

It doesn’t just explore through Egido, Tosar, and Bardem; their pals are just as important. There’s Bugallo, who becomes a day drinker with his wife away taking care of family. There’s Joaquín Climent, who owns the bar where they all drink. He took his severance and set up a place where everyone else could give him theirs (but no, he actually comps his alcoholic pals). He’s also got teenage daughter Aida Folch, who probably shouldn’t be growing up in this environment. Especially not given Bardem’s such an oaf of a man-slut. Then there’s Enrique Villén, who’s a security guard (so a cop), and Serge Riaboukine, who came to Spain when the Soviet Union collapsed. Cosmonaut to ship-builder to handbill passer. And because the acting and the script are so damn good, Mondays is able to get away with such an obvious statement about the world grinding up its workers.

Performance-wise, Bardem’s best. Then Egido. Then de Medina, then Tosar. She’s better because of the material. Suffering wife beats out passive inflicter of said suffering. The supporting cast is all excellent too.

Very nice cinematography from Archie Mayo. That Godoy score is great—gentle, yet aware of the grit. Capillas’s editing is fantastic. Julio Esteban’s production design. The technical side is all strong.

Mondays in the Sun is an outstanding film.

This post is part of the Unemployment Blogathon hosted by Steve of Movie Movie Blog Blog II: The Sequel.

Even the Rain (2010, Icíar Bollaín)

Even the Rain has a particular narrative distance as it starts, then changes to another one a little later on. Director Bollaín doesn’t transition gradually between these two vantage points; she keeps the pacing of scenes and how they flow into each other, just from the new distance. The film has an ambitious narrative juxtapositioning to convey, one based somewhat on surface comparisons, but the film succeeds through how Bollaín, writer Paul Laverty, and the cast navigate through that comparison.

The film starts with an introduction to filmmakers Luis Tosar and Gael García Bernal. Tosar is the efficient, callous, cheap producer, García Bernal is the moody, but dedicated director. During the first half of the film, there’s also quite a bit with Cassandra Ciangherotti, who’s along to film a documentary about the movie they’re making. It’s a Christopher Columbus picture, only focusing on the people who realized maybe it was wrong to enslave the native population.

Initially, there’s enough through Ciangherotti’s camera to help Bollaín with that initial narrative distance. It’s a movie about making a movie. There’s the drunken star (Karra Elejalde), who has some trouble learning his lines, but he’s still an astoundingly good actor. Bollaín’s first of many jawdroppingly masterful scenes involves Elejalde immediately going into character during a table read and mesmerizing everyone around him. Including his younger, full of it, costars, played by Raúl Arévalo and Carlos Santos.

The character relationships drive the film through the first act. Tosar and García Bernal, with Ciangherotti a frequent third, have a definite bond, even though the two have completely different ideas about how they should be making the film. Especially given they’re going to be using local native populations as extras.

García Bernal’s casting of one of those natives, Juan Carlos Aduviri, in an important supporting role changes the film in the film’s production, as well as everything else. It turns out Aduviri isn’t just any local, he’s leading the protests against the government’s water privatization.

And instead of his involvement materially affecting García Bernal’s experience, it’s Tosar’s. The first act plays pretty loose with defining one character as a protagonist. It’s like Rain keeps pushing off having to decide and when it finally reveals Tosar in that position, the film ramps up its ambition. Bollaín, Laverty, and Tosar keep aiming higher, making their targets, keep aiming higher. Throughout the second act, the film just impresses more and more….

Then the third act takes it even further. The characters become accutely aware of the juxtaposition of exploited peoples in the sixteenth century and the twenty-first they find themselves in, with most of the cast essaying glamorless shifts in Laverty’s script. Meanwhile, Tosar and Aduviri find themselves reluctantly bound together.

Rain is a phenomenal collaboration between Bollaín, Laverty, and the actors. Bollaín directs the actors through rough introspective, then immediately switches over to gorgeous, epical filmmaking. Alex Catalán’s photography is wondrous, Ángel Hernández Zoido’s editing keeps perfect timing with Bollaín’s pace. Bollaín perfectly combines the overtly cinematic, movie in the movie, movie about making a movie, with the intense character drama.

Tosar’s performance is subtle and overwhelming. Once he gets his first scene to himself, away from Ciangherotti’s video camera, it becomes clear he’s going to be the protagonist sooner or later. With the depth of his performance, he just has to be the lead.

García Bernal’s good, in a very different kind of part from anyone else in the film. He’s sort of a cipher, but for different reasons than Tosar. Tosar reveals himself through his character development, García Bernal reveals himself through the plot progression and his reactions to events. The two are fantastic together, though nothing compared to Tosar and Aduviri.

The only reason Aduviri doesn’t walk off with the film is because it’s not this expansive look at these (real life) water riots. He too remains something of a mystery, but only to Tosar and García Bernal. Aduviri does have the hardest part in the film, just because in his first scene, everyone discusses what he’s going to do in the movie in the movie but due to his nature demeanor, not acting. It sets up the character–and Aduviri’s responsibilities–quite differently from anyone else.

Elejalde is awesome as the drunken, old actor, bringing much needed comic relief. He’s able to defuse tension, both through the part in the script and just how well Elejalde acts it. Because Bollaín knows just how to direct him.

Even the Rain is a spellbinding film. Bollaín and Tosar (and everyone else) do something spectacular.

The Devil’s Backbone (2001, Guillermo del Toro)

The Devil’s Backbone takes place at an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War (in Spain, obviously). The film follows Fernando Tielve as he arrives and has conflicts with the other boys, before everything gets worked out. For about half the film, one of the other boys, Íñigo Garcés, is the antagonist. But everything with the boys is basically a misunderstanding and, in the second half, the film introduces the real villain.

There’s also a ghost, some political unrest, unrequited love between the school doctor and the headmistress, lust, greed and an unexploded bomb. Director del Toro goes overboard with the symbolism; for much of the film, it works too. He tries to be way too tidy in the end, however, and it doesn’t work. He refocuses the story away from Tielve and Garcés and the other boys–greed and lust are the (literal) apple here–but the boys have nothing to do with them. They lose their story.

It’s too bad, but there’s still a lot of great work in the film. del Toro’s direction, Guillermo Navarro’s photography and Javier Navarrete’s music are all phenomenal. Luis de la Madrid’s editing hangs a little, but usually for symbolism’s sake, which might be del Toro’s fault.

Tielve and Garcés are both excellent. As the adults, Federico Luppi and Marisa Paredes are great. In the film’s most difficult role–an orphan grown-up and returned–Eduardo Noriega does okay, but better when it matters.

Backbone’s almost an excellent film. Very, very close.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Guillermo del Toro; written by del Toro, Antonio Trashorras and David Muñoz; director of photography, Guillermo Navarro; edited by Luis de la Madrid; music by Javier Navarrete; production designer, César Macarrón; produced by Agustín Almodóvar and Bertha Navarro; released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Starring Fernando Tielve (Carlos), Íñigo Garcés (Jaime), Marisa Paredes (Carmen), Eduardo Noriega (Jacinto), Federico Luppi (Dr. Casares), Irene Visedo (Conchita) and Adrián Lamana (Gálvez).

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Tristana (1970, Luis Buñuel)

Deliberate, somehow endless–it clocks in at ninety-five–Tristana is something of an anti-Buñuel or, at least, I was expecting something a little more uncanny. Tristana is so normal, it’s something of a surprise (the film occasionally seems ready to leap into the surreal, but it remains grounded throughout). But it’s very boring, in that good way films can be boring. I can’t tell if Buñuel was doing something fantastic with the sound design or if the DVD was just a poor transfer. I think he was doing something with it though, just because some of the metallic echoes didn’t seem right for a bad transfer.

Tristana is the story of a young woman, Deneuve, whose mother dies and she ends up as the ward of Fernando Rey… and, as it turns out, Rey is a dirty old man. He doesn’t quite force himself on her and he doesn’t quite seduce her, something in between, and that development (after he endears himself to the viewer by not being a dirty old man toward her) sets the film’s present “action” (quotation marks for absurdity’s sake) in motion. Buñuel skips through time a few times in the film, so it’s hard to know how much time passes before the end, but less than ten years seems reasonable (it’s from a novel, so I suppose I could check but I don’t really want to know).

It’s rare–and I suppose it’s appropriate Buñuel does it one of the handful of times I’ve seen it done–a film can cover so much time, so much change to a character (I never really understood Deneuve’s reputation as an actress, but she’s astounding in Tristana), with so little deliberate action and be so affecting in the end. Tristana works because of its end… but it wouldn’t make any sense without what came before. Even though, for the first bit and sometimes again throughout the film, Rey is the central character, it’s all about Deneuve and seeing what terrible effect Rey has on her. It’s a tragedy, but one so quite and common seeming… especially when one is waiting for a sword fight for most of the first half.

The setting of a small Spanish town and the sound design–along with the maid (Rey’s, also Deneuve’s only friend for most of the film) having a deaf son–create an odd atmosphere for the film… if it weren’t for the setting, I’d say it were practically Gothic, feminist revisionist, if such a genre exists. Buñuel has an interesting way of shooting the empty streets too–he has ornate camera setups he never allows to complete, big crane shots only get a few feet off the ground before he cuts away, creating a sense of incompleteness. The whole film–no spoilers, though one could just go to IMDb–but the whole film is about incompleteness and the terrible, selfish things people do to each other.

The only real indicator of the uncanny–besides being suspicious of Buñuel–is a dream sequence, which lays the groundwork, early on, to be suspicious of everything. But it could be me.

Deneuve’s character’s arc in this film is one of those singular filmic tragedies. Buñuel’s handling of it makes it all the more effective, but her performance makes everything possible. It’s an odd thing–a choice role, one anyone could succeed in, filled with a performance proving no one else could succeed in it.

3.5/4★★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Luis Buñuel; screenplay by Buñuel and Julio Alejandro, based on the novel by Benito Pérez Galdós; director of photography, José F. Aguayo; edited by Pedro del Rey; produced by Buñuel and Robert Dorfmann; released by Maron Films.

Starring Catherine Deneuve (Tristana), Fernando Rey (Don Lope), Franco Nero (Horacio), Lola Gaos (Saturna), Jesús Fernández (Saturno) and Antonio Casas (Don Cosme).

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Pan’s Labyrinth (2006, Guillermo del Toro)

Pan’s Labyrinth is a pretty film. Gorgeous cinematography, great locations, intricate make-up (bad CG, but it’s only really noticeable once). Guillermo del Toro does a decent job directing the film but has these really annoying transitions–the back of someone’s head frequently becomes a tree in the forest in unending pans. His script is competent and, well, heartless. I was trying to work up some suspense, but since del Toro ruins Pan’s Labyrinth‘s suspense in the opening shot, maybe it’s appropriate. Pan’s Labyrinth could have been a really good war movie, but instead del Toro mucks around in fantasy. Bad fantasy.

I was hoping Pan’s Labyrinth would either use the fantasy elements as a metaphor (it does not) or would be a descendent of Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast. Unfortunately, it’s neither. Instead, like I said before, it’s heartless. Only one of the characters is at all human and she’s just human by default. The rest are unbelievable, except maybe the bad guy (until the end, anyway). The lead character, the precocious girl, goes from being wise beyond her years to being inconceivably stupid. Del Toro never spends any time figuring the character out in any real sense, so there’s not even a surprise (by the time she got stupid, I’d already given up). There’s also absolutely no suspense in the film, thanks a) to del Toro giving everything away at the beginning and b) just some lame plotting.

The performances are fine, but not worth enumerating. Something does need to be said for the graphic violence, however. Instead of attaching any real emotion to Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro makes it frequently bloody to get the audience interested (Paul Verhoeven talked about this method in regards to Robocop–if you haven’t gotten the audience to care with actual character development, blood and guts can do it).

Pan’s Labyrinth is so artificial it’s hard to be particularly disappointed. While it’s boring and empty, the war aspect is so full of potential, you can just sit and imagine the fantasy thing being gone and the movie being good. Maybe it’s because del Toro doesn’t have any M. Night Shyamalan moments… well, until the end, but who cares by then? It’s almost over.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro; director of photography, Guillermo Navarro; edited by Bernat Vilaplana; music by Javier Navarrete; production designer, Eugenio Caballero; produced by Bertha Navarro, Alfonso Cuarón, Frida Torresblanco and Álvaro Augustin; released by Picturehouse.

Starring Sergi López (Vidal), Maribel Verdú (Mercedes), Ivana Baquero (Ofelia), Ariadna Gil (Carmen), Alex Angulo (Doctor) and Doug Jones (Pale Man).

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