The first 40 minutes of Venuto al mondo (Twice Born), competing in this year's Official Section of the Zinemaldia festival, are, frankly, laughably bad. As well as a corny script and stereotyped characters, the action and events completely lack credibility. Directed by Italian Sergio Castellitto, the film stars Penélope Cruz as Italian beauty Gemma who is swept off her feet by Emile Hirsch's Diego, an American photographer and free spirit. The character of Diego is so full of energy and utter rapture about everything that he is incapable of entering a room without tripping up with excitement over the wallpaper. He and la bella Gemma are first introduced by their mutual, stereotypically … [Read more...] about San Sebastián Film Festival: understanding war and ethnic division
IberoArts
San Sebastián Film Festival: death and happiness
El muerto y ser feliz (‘The Dead Man and Being Happy’) was the name of the Spanish-Argentinian production showing on Sunday as part of this year's Official Section at the San Sebastián Film Festival. It’s a bizarre title with two apparently conflicting ideas; a clue in itself to understanding a film which, in director Javier Rebollo's words, is not contradictory but “paradoxical”. José Sacristán plays paid assassin Santos, who is (fittingly, perhaps,) dying. When he skips hospital and sets out on a road trip with money from his last – failed – hit job and a box of morphine, the viewer joins him on a 6,000-kilometre road trip across Argentina – and, says the director, a “nature … [Read more...] about San Sebastián Film Festival: death and happiness
San Sebastián Film Festival: Snow White hits Andalusia
Not long after movie audiences made the pleasing discovery, thanks to last year's The Artist, that silent films can still be enjoyable, Pablo Berger's Blancanieves, competing in this year's Official Section, provides yet another silent revelation. The story of Snow White set in early 20th century Andalusia actually works. Berger's Blancanieves is Carmencita (played by Sofía Oria and Macarena García), born in Seville during the Belle Époque, a rose-tinted era of Spain's past that lends itself perfectly to silent cinema. Snow White's father is a handsome and celebrated bullfighter, her mother a famous flamenco dancer who dies in childbirth after seeing her husband gored and left paralysed … [Read more...] about San Sebastián Film Festival: Snow White hits Andalusia
San Sebastián Film Festival: Gere finds sinister charm in ‘Arbitrage’
The San Sebastian Film Festival got off to a cracking start on Friday with US film Arbitrage, starring Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Tim Roth and directed by Nicholas Jarecki. Opening the event’s 60th edition, Jarecki's film is competing in this year's Official Section. Arbitrage is a tense thriller, set against a corporate backdrop, with a tight script and an energetic pace that is largely down to script writer and debutant director Jarecki. Gere plays Robert Miller, a business magnate who is ready to sell up, supposedly to spend more time with his family. At first he looks as if he has it all: a loving wife (an excellent if little-seen Sarandon), a devoted son and a brilliant … [Read more...] about San Sebastián Film Festival: Gere finds sinister charm in ‘Arbitrage’
José Luis Garci’s Sherlock Holmes is out to rescue Spain
It’s now 30 years since José Luis Garci won Spain its first Oscar for Begin the Beguine. In the interim, he has made another 14 films, the latest of which, now on general release, is Holmes & Watson. Madrid Days. That 1982 Oscar gave a much-need boost to the Spanish film industry — even though the film had been panned by the critics and was a commercial flop — and, along with hosting the World Cup and Felipe González’s election win the same year, ushered in a lengthy period of national self-confidence now in tatters after the implosion of the economy. For Garci himself, winning an Academy Award must have been especially gratifying: this is a man for whom Hollywood, and particularly … [Read more...] about José Luis Garci’s Sherlock Holmes is out to rescue Spain
A new take on the American abroad
Young American poet Adam Gordon is a fraud and a bastard. And the fact he’s spending a year in Madrid, as the recipient of a prestigious fellowship, is thanks to total pretence. Officially, he’s in the Spanish capital to write a “long and research-driven poem… about the literary response to the Civil War.” But Adam intends doing no such thing (thank god). Instead he smokes pot, takes prescription drugs, forms wafer-thin relationships and frets constantly about the validity of his experiences. If that narrative risks coming off as trite, then Leaving the Atocha Station, by American poet Ben Lerner (who spent a year in Madrid as a Fulbright scholar), is far from it. The book, which is thin … [Read more...] about A new take on the American abroad
A life in song
Chavela Vargas, who attained legendary status through her renditions of Mexican ranchera music throughout much of the Spanish-speaking world in her final years, died on August 3, at the age of 93. Born Isabel Vargas Lizano in Costa Rica, before being abandoned by her parents as a child, she moved to Mexico aged 17, in 1936. Her arrival coincided with the rise of ranchera music, which like country music in the United States, was initially a celebration of rural values, but soon became a format to explore themes such as the hopelessness of love, the sorrows of which are best drowned in the bottle. Vargas soon became part of the circle of artists and hangers on associated with painters … [Read more...] about A life in song
Miró and co. still in demand despite the crisis
On the heels of a successful Art Basel show in Switzerland in June, Europe’s largest auction houses have started their own summer selling seasons with some strong results. One of the highlights of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Sale in London on June 19, 2012, was a worldwide record set for Joan Miró’s Peinture (Étoile Bleue), c.1927. The painting sold for £23.5 million, well over pre-sale estimates of £15-20 million and three times its price when it last sold at auction in 2007. Other works by Miró that fared well at the auction included a later gouache, Tête, that sold for over £260,000, exceeding its estimates of £150-200,000. There were also a handful of Salvador Dalí and … [Read more...] about Miró and co. still in demand despite the crisis
Willy Toledo: The reasons for being a rebel
Willy Toledo – you either love him or you hate him. He made his big break as an actor on the TV show 7 Vidas alongside Paz Vega and Toni Cantó, but he is better known for his political activism. Guillermo Toledo Monsalve, now 42, had an unusual upbringing. Christened by a left-wing priest in the final years of the Franco regime, Toledo’s father came from a working class family who managed to finance his degree in medicine and his mother is from an upper-class family. Despite his relatively privileged background, Toledo received an unorthodox education, studying at the Colegio Estilo, a school based on the principle of constant creative stimulation, which was popular with the members of … [Read more...] about Willy Toledo: The reasons for being a rebel
Rosales paints a masterpiece of family grief
Fresh from its premier in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at this year’s rain-soaked Cannes, Sueño y silencio was originally going to be a very different film. Or rather, a very traditional one. Catalan filmmaker Jaime Rosales planned to shoot in colour, with professional actors and a conventional script. But as he prepared the film, all that fell away, leaving us with grungy, grainy black and white, non-actors, no script and a series of fragmentary scenes that sketch out, with aching and rare authenticity, a family in terrible crisis. Oriol, an architect, and his wife Yolanda, a Spanish teacher, live in Paris with their two daughters. Their lives are comfortable and unremarkable. In … [Read more...] about Rosales paints a masterpiece of family grief