A Story that Came from the South

Movie Review 

****

Ali by Paco Baños

Ali is afraid of falling in love and terrified of driving… smokes like a chimney and is as blunt and cynical as they make them.

Paco Baños' heroine lives in Seville, but she could be from anywhere else. She struggles with becoming an adult, though she behaves like one at home, where she is used to play a protective and caring role with her mum. Ali looks after her progenitor, who doesn't give up on love despite all the failed 'Princes Charming'.

Baños' film made me flashed back to the Seville I lived in about eight years ago; the city where the Cine Avenida screened Buffalo '66, one of the director’s confessed inspirations for this movie. And, I’m not saying you should forget about the touristic and traditional image of Seville, but you should also know there is so much to this alternative side of the city. And, I feel proud to say it’s this under-the-surface Seville that has made possible a little gem of the Spanish cinema like Ali.

Ali’s dialog is witty, quick, fun and sharp, as is its heroine, a certainly inspired Nadia de Santiago. Baños’ film talks about overcoming our fears; it’s a tale with tender men and strong women. It’s a movie with Andalusian accent. Julio de la Rosa’s soundtrack is delicate at times, pays an homage to garage rock and to dancy pop, and hypnotises us with bells and subtle notes. But, what makes this an incredible soundtrack is Ali’s breathing or smoking, her laugh, the sound of the sea near the Trafalgar’s lighthouse or that torrential rain that you knew was going to happen just because someone decided to put their clothes up in the terrace.

I honestly don’t think I’d change anything in Baños’ movie that succeeds at telling a genuine story about how people become important when they are connected to each other. A tale coloured by the sunlight, warm and bright, from the south that inundates every frame of its wonderful cinematography.

The End of the Summer

August came for the grey stones,

abandoned to a sepulchral silence.

Gone is the hullabaloo

of the sunny days.

Frothy waves

are thrown by a teal sea

and the impetuous wind,

up and down the shore.

OMG, I Went to See TFIOS!

Review of The Fault In Our Stars

Once or twice a year, I find myself reading a YA novel, it's one of those guilty pleasures I allow myself from time to time. Last year, I read The Hunger Games trilogy, which I devoured in two weeks, and by chance since it was highly recommended by cultural gurus such as Reasonable Discussions (the disappeared podcast by the AV Club) The Fault In Our Stars. It was a book about kids with cancer, yes, but no, the story had something different that thankfully made it a best-seller. I can think of much worse YA novels to end up in teenagers’ hands. At least this one featured teenagers I could relate to, as the teenager I once was and as an adult.

The Fault In Our Stars movie adaptation shared a problem with The Hunger Games trilogy, how to accept actors incarnating characters that have been so emotionally close to me as a reader? As a teenager, I read The Outsiders avidly, cried like never before with a book and identified amazingly well with Sodapop, a character I had nothing in common but the awkwardness of being a teenager. When reading about Katniss Everdeen and Hazel Grace Lancaster they became those perfect heroines I never had in my teens. In my thirties I felt them as fully developed characters, and went inside their heads as much as I once did with Sodapop’s.

The young adult genre is as rich as irregular, and I can say I still enjoy approaching some titles every so often. What I found more interesting and refreshing about both novels were these strong female characters with driven, who pull their weight and make these stories so inspiring. John Green's story had a unique tone, a little something that I thought difficult to transfer to a movie. Hazel and specially Augustus are so unique, so well rounded and charming that I thought no cast choice would feel right.

My admiration goes to Shailene Woodley, who became Hazel on screen and on the off screen narration, so easy to mess up by over or under acting. I have my reservations about the choice for Gus, because, come on, who is so charming at that age? And, how difficult is to shape a quality as abstract as charm? Augustus has so much more depth in the book, but isn't it because we magnify his charm to our taste while reading?

There is one thing that bothered me about the movie, well, no the movie itself, but its marketing campaign. The movie posters show, instead of the usual magazine quotes, random tweets about the movie by even more random people. If I am correct this has been done before for some other movies marketed to teenagers, and I can’t think of a worse way to discredit a film. I went to see the movie, because I enjoyed the novel by John Green, but I wonder how many people will be discouraged by this. I imagine “OMG, I love TFIOS so much!! But I cried like a baby!” is not going to convince many people to go and see the movie. But, although there might be some crying involved, I certainly recommend it, as much as the book.

A Cage Of Dreams

Review of The Golden Dream by Diego Quemada-Díaz

I admit, I went to see The Golden Dream partly skeptical about the need of another movie about young immigrants from Central America on their journey to the USA. I do have a social conscience, that is not the problem, and I like to see these stories on film (I believe cinema has the obligation to show what happens out there, since the mass media has become a bit of an entertainment tool these days). I also feel more than respect for directors that don’t mask the truth and decide to give voice to those who don’t make it to the 6pm news. My skeptical attitude had more to do with the fact that I had seen Sin nombre (Cary Fukunaga, 2009) so I couldn’t stop wondering what would make this movie unique from the audience's point of view. I didn’t have to wait long to see the difference.

I was one of those lucky viewers who had the chance to listen to Quemada-Diaz explaining the process of filming The Golden Dream after the show. He struck me as a gentle but combative speaker. As he explained, he didn’t want to tell a horror story (there is not much happiness laying around of the way of illegal immigrants), but he manages to suggest the obstacles his characters, built out of real testimonies, will find on their way. He definitely succeeds on doing so without falling into explicit violence or using shocking images.

However, there is one confusing element as spectator when watching The Golden Dream: it lacks the rhythm expected in a road movie. Quemada-Diaz, in the Q&A session that followed the film, expressed his wish for making an epic movie (epic in proportion, since it combines hundreds of testimonies). The epic pace is the one you should expect. The story and characters develop surrounded by infinite landscapes and the hundreds of people who accompany them in their journey.

The Golden Dream is a beautifully shot movie with a poetic cinematography and the many unresolved and intriguing events of the lives of Sara, Chauk and specially Juan. It’s a tale of brotherhood and loyalty, in which the unexpected may be the key to survival.

Night-blooming Jasmine

One of the reasons I studied Communication (Journalism if you like) was because it was the closest I could be from a career in cinema: I could write about the Seventh Art! Taking into account my abilities, it seems I took the right decision back then. My sensibilities are in both places though...
 

My college years, like for everyone I think, were a time for discovery. And as strange as this may sound, Woody Allen is something like a mystery to me since then. He is one of those directors you couldn't get to know at home (at least not in mine, since he was considered this neurotic little man who told the same stories over and over again). I had my Allen's marathons in college, but there were a lot of movies I didn't get to see. They were always taken in the faculty film library! Today I still think of those ones I missed as a gap in my cinema education.

Last week, I went to see Blue Jasmine, that was screened in the Mermaid Arts Centre (Bray). I was happy to see the place was absolutely packed. First, because I find comforting people still go to see movies with good acting. Even I, as ignorant as I am about Allen's career, know I am going to see actors in a moment of brilliance, with the obvious exceptions. Second, because, does this full house mean he is becoming mainstream?

I can't talk much about the movie without spoiling the story, but I can tell you this: you should see Cate Blanchett as Jasmine. Some people have the opinion she is a cold looking woman. I would always would prefer to describe her as ethereal (Galadriel's fault, I guess). Blanchett’s Jasmine is ridiculous, shallow, but vulnerable and afraid of being alone too. Woody Allen’s special talent is writing character defining dialog, and through it we learn to love and detest Jasmine.

Jasmine is one of those anti-heroes the screens are overpopulated with these last few years (Breaking Bad, Justified, Dexter, to name just a few). When she starts telling her story, we find difficult to feel sympathy for her. The way she talks about her past life in Manhattan, the Hamptons, St. Tropez…, makes you despise this creature that is from that other side of the world. But, at times, you may feel like forgiving her sins and pitying her, especially when you sense she is about to collapse.

Jasmine has been invented by Jeanette (Blanchett's character's real name) the same way she has invented a fictional happy marriage and a not so fictional careless life. She is this delicate and classy lady, who speaks like a character out of Casablanca. Describing the way she meets her husband, wrapping the moment in a romantic veil, in which Blue Moon was playing and “he swept her off her feet”. During her life with Hal (her “very, very rich" husband), she is “scaling the dizzy heights of high society” and shares a fate not far from who inspired A Lady Of A Certain Age by The Divine Comedy.

The property bubble and financial malpractises cause the chain of events that will bring Jasmine to feel like fish out of water, and will destroy lives of many around her. Woody Allen does not offer an analysis of this chain of events, but delivers a satirical speech against the authors of those events efficiently, through a dialog that spares no punches.

Homage Is The Word You Are Looking For

It is not the first year I have this feeling of anticipation about all the movies released just before the Oscars (in this impossible race before the nominees are announced). The last few years, all the releases are squeezed into a few weeks, to leave us with nothing else to watch for the rest of the year. I am happy to live with this high season of cinema, if what comes to the screens is going to impress me and leave me with a good taste in my mouth for the next few months.

I went to see Silver Linings Playbook in the cinema last year (and recently again, in the First Fortnight Festival). I really enjoyed the movie both times. I thought Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence (Golden Globe for her role last year) delivered better than fine performances. Their acting and chemistry are some of the best things about the movie, which eventually falls into a happy/easy end. But we can forgive that, we do want those two characters to have a second chance in life, don’t we?

I always thought David O’Russell movies had a weird logic to them. I also thought that logic got in the way of people caring about his characters; at least I remember feeling that way with I Heart Huckabees, and this same thing I have confirmed with American Hustle. I believe O’Russell is also an amazing actors’ director. But I find his original stories do not make you fall in love with the people in them, but make you conscious, all the time, they are just characters.

As one of the favourite pictures for the Oscars, and also in the Golden Globes, I wanted to like American Hustle. I wished to find a well written movie I could appreciate and enjoy. The cast performances are impeccable, from the more discussed roles of Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence, to Amy Adams or Jeremy Renner, although I thought of Bradley Cooper to be too histrionic this time. I did find most of them quite authentic as an ensemble in this charade, as part of this homage to the late 1970's and Scorsese.

I did appreciate the art of camouflage that most actors practised successfully in the film. The disguising into a con man, a British femme fatale, an arsonist housewife or the New Jersey’s Mayor is convincing. The story they are involved in, not so much. And I am almost sure this is not because of an improbable plot, but more due to the fact the movie lacks narrative rhythm. The pace in which the story develops did not engage me as a viewer.

The soundtrack however did at times, as it offers some musical treasures of all time: the disco, but not outdated, Donna Summer’s I feel love; the popular Delilah by Tom Jones or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John, to name some of my favourites. So, I guess you could say American Hustle is a fantastic fancy dress party, where the music helps in creating evocative scenes and some of the best atmospheric moments in the cinema of 2013.

Frozen

First of all, let me apologise, I am definitely not an authority on Disney princesses and I still resist to watch some of the movies which have a princess as the main character. This stubbornness is due to a couple of reasons: I had terrible aversion to the colour pink and princesses since early age, thanks to the spoiled girl I used to play with after school (she was obsessed about clothing in pink and thought she was a princess).  

My second reason is more of a story telling preservation instinct. I, as a child, had read The Beauty and the Beast, the traditional French fairy tale. When I was about ten years old, most girls in my school went crazy about the Disney film, but I could never get that interested. The characters of the original story looked nothing like the ones in the Disney version of this tale, and they almost certainly didn't sing, at least not in my head.

I believe is just fair I mention this background before I go on talking about Frozen, since these facts do not dispose me to like the movie or even give me a strong reason to watch it. I confess the fact that Kirsten Bell was putting voice to the princess convinced me to give it a go. I am a helpless Veronica Mars fan, so I was hoping for a witty princess, which I though it could be a refreshing feature. However, I found some other fresh ideas thrown in to this story.

I heard there was no villain for this one, but I don’t agree, as I think Elsa's power is the villain. That power and the ignorance built around it that makes her a lonesome human being. I thought of those as wonderful starting points to write a story about tolerance, a value so needed no matter what century we are in.

The Snow Queen story is not a familiar one to me, but it’s needless to say this is a very free interpretation of Andersen’s tale. Perhaps we can forgive Disney if the story is less of a princess being saved by the prince, and more of an adventure led by the princess to protect what she loves the most.

Frozen is a musical and that part I did not enjoy as much as I should have (not a fan of musicals either, what can I say!), but for those who like the genre the soundtrack includes some catchy songs and beautifully sang melodies.

What I liked the most is that the prince does not save the day. The not very beautiful creatures, the trolls Kristoff has become friends with, are wise and helpful. Romantic love is not what this movie revolves around, although Disney didn’t go as far as Pixar with Brave and Princess Anna does have a love interest (or two!). And there are some pretty decent jokes on it such as Olaf’s preferences in life.