Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : Eighteen-year-old orphan Marina ( Llúcia Garcia , centre) observes her late father's family in a scene from Spanish writer-director  Carla Simón 's third feature, ' Romería'. Still courtesy of Curzon (UK)   If a father chooses to edit his version of reality for the purpose of appearances, should he be forced to acknowledge the truth for the sake of his granddaughter? This is the dilemma posed in Spanish writer-director Carla Simón’s third feature, Romería (an informal Spanish word meaning ‘pilgrimage’). Set in July 2004, and drawing heavily on her mother’s diaries, quoted in voiceover but underpinning a fictional narrative, Simón’s film follows five days in the life of Marina (Llúcia Garcia), an eighteen-year-old would-be film student who requires a document to confirm that she is the daughter of Alfonso (‘Fon’) Piñeiro, who died in the late 1980s before she was born, at least as far as she knows. When Marina travels to the records office in the Galician...

  Pictured : Marta ( Alba Rohrwacher , right) shares a bed with a cut-out of Korean pop star,  Jirko ( Sungku Jung , left). To borrow from The Purple Rose of Cairo , he's two-dimensional, but you can't have everything. A scene from director Isabel Coixet 's Italian film, ' Three Goodbyes ' (Italian title ' Tre Ciotole '), adapted from Michela Murgia 's short stories by Coixet and  Enrico Audenino . Still courtesy of Vision Distribution (Italy)  The title Tre Ciotole , an Italian film from Spanish director Isabel Coixet, translates into English as ‘three bowls.’ It has been re-named Three Goodbyes for the wider international market, lest it be mistaken for a sports movie. A bowl needs an arresting prefix to be included in a film title, for example, The Golden Bowl , director James Ivory’s 2000 adaptation of Henry James’ novel. Bowls are utilitarian, glazed, rarely ornate, but indispensable for the consumption of soup. You associate three bowls with a fa...

  Pictured : Cata ( Zoe Stein ) and her grandfather, Tomeu ( Lluis Homar ) in a scene from  Spanish writer-director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias ’ feature debut, ' Forastera '. Still courtesy of Alpha Violet I am tempted to describe Forastera , Spanish writer-director Lucía Aleñar Iglesis’ feature debut, expanded from a short film of the same name, as a ‘coming of old age’ story. In it, seventeen-year-old Cata (Zoe Stein) inhabits the spirit of her late grandmother, Catalina (Marta Angelat), having discovered her dead body face down outside her coastal Mallorca home. Told from Cata’s point of view, the film withholds some information – Cata’s sister, Eva (Martina Garcia) is thinly-sketched, the grief of her grandfather, Tomeu (Lluis Homar) only sensed through a narrow set of actions. For the most part, Cata is catalytic, provoking others through her version of cosplay, as she negotiates a suspended sense of grief. The film is more needlepoint than drama. For an audience to be emot...

  Alcarr à s , co-writer-director Carla Sim ó n’s 2022 Golden Bear-winning follow-up to her impressive 2017 debut feature, Estiu 1993 , tackles a huge problem – the impact of globalization on small farmers, working constantly but barely eking a living. She does so through the microcosm of the extended peach farming family, the Sol é s, who live in the titular area, situated in the Catalunya province of Lleida. We observe the family as they harvest the last of their crops before the diggers are due to arrive, turning their tall groves into a solar farm. The family’s name is intentionally ironic. In Estiu 1993 , the action was mostly staged from the point of view of a young girl. In Alcarr à s , co-scripted by Arnau Vilar ó , Sim ó n eschews the device of having a single principal viewpoint character. Her camera moves between family members, who variously court and thwart our sympathy – we observe the good and bad in each. There is no extra diegetic music to tell us how to feel, th...

  Contains significant plot detail Can an act of terrorism ever be forgiven? Justice is relative, based on concepts of injury and a legal system that determines intention, burden of proof and applicable tariffs. Forgiveness is outside the purview of any court. The bereaved assess the mental state of the perpetrator – the expression is ‘to look into their eyes to see what is in their hearts’. Then they decide. Sometimes forgiveness takes place in absentia, typically when religion is involved. Sometimes forgiveness is impossible, because the sense of hurt colours everything. Terrorism may be indiscriminate, but grief is personal. Director Ic í ar Bolla í n’s fact-based film, Maixabel , deals with a widow, Maixabel Lasa (Blanca Portillo) who agrees to meet with her husband’s killers, members of the proscribed terrorist group, ETA, short for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or ‘Basque Homeland and Liberty’, under a scheme brought in by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). Most of th...

  It opened on 29 March 2019 on 235 screens, but if the website box office mojo is to be believed, director Inés de León’s feature debut , ¿Que te juegas? ( Get her ... if you can ) was pulled from Spanish cinemas after two weeks of release. The big Spanish language hit that replaced it, I Can Quit Whenever I Want , is a remake of an Italian comedy about three unemployed professors who develop a drug that helps them party all night. There is no accounting for popular taste. De León’s film focuses on a wager between two brothers, Roberto and Fernando Allende-Salazar (Javier Rey and Daniel Pérez Prada) whose company is facing ruin. As CEO, their sister, Daniela (Amaia Salamanca) proposes lay-offs and downsizing. Roberto, who is something of a playboy, makes a counter proposal - a turbine that he has sketched that will transform the company’s prospects. Fernando, who hides in an office in army uniform, has given his sister his vote. Roberto bets his brother that he can find someone ...

  Icíar Bollain (born 12 June 1967 in Madrid, Spain) is an actress turned director who came to prominence with her 2003 drama, Take My Eyes (Te doy mis ojos ) about a woman fleeing domestic violence. After appearing in such films as Victor Erice’s El Sur (1982) and Pablo Llorca’s Jardines colgantes (1993), she made the transition to feature film directing with the comedy Hola, estas sola in 1995. Several feature films followed including Flowers from Another World (1999), Mataharis (2007), Even the Rain (2010) and Katmandú, un espejo en el cielo (Katmandu, a mirror in the sky) (2011). Her most recent film is the documentary, En tierra extraña ( Strange Land ), about three unhappy Spanish migrants living in Edinburgh. Not by coincidence, Bollain is married to a Scot, the screenwriter Paul Laverty, who frequently collaborates with Ken Loach. Also not by coincidence, Bollain appeared in Loach’s Tierra y libertad ( Land and Freedom ) in 1995. El Olivo , scripted by Laverty, is...

  Estiu 1993 ( Summer 1993) absolutely bowled me over (that’s English for ‘I really, really liked it’). It is the debut feature of Spanish-born, London Film School-trained writer-director Carla Simón, whose previous credits include the 2013 short film, Lipstick . Simón based the film on her childhood. When Simón was aged six, her mother died. She was taken to live with her aunt, uncle and cousin. The film isn’t exactly autobiographical but has emotional truth. It is a terrific film about adjustment and repressed emotion, a reminder that, as children, we don’t know how to express what we feel because we don’t know how to process something. How can you grieve when you are not sure what you have really lost? Simón’s six-year old alter ego is Frida (Laia Artigas, terrific) who we first see in a game of freeze tag. A boy attempts to frighten her into movement but she is stock still. ‘Why are not crying?’ he hisses. At home, her aunt Marga (Bruna Cusi) and uncle Esteve (David Verdagu...