Spanish Film Festival 2010

Dates & venues:
Adelaide, Palace Nova Eastend; 13 - 16 May
Brisbane, Palace Centro; 20 - 30 May
Canberra: Greater Union Manuka; 6 - 16 May
Melbourne: Palace Balwyn, Como and Kino Cinemas; 12 - 23 May
Sydney: Palace Norton St, Academy Twin & GU Burwood Cinemas; 5 - 16 May

It’s certainly the time of year for Spanish film buffs to be saturated in this vibrant national cinema. After La Mirada in Melbourne gave a diverse taste of Spanish culture, now the 13th Spanish Film Festival hits Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, and Adelaide with a further exciting program of 40 contemporary Spanish language movies from Spain and Latin America.

Leading the way is Alejandro Amenabar’s latest Agora, with Rachel Weisz in an historical epic - in the English language to encourage those who don’t like subtitles. In 4th century Alexandria (part of the Roman Empire) legendary female philosopher and astronomer Hypatia (Weisz) exercises her great influence at this time of political and religious upheaval.

Her slave Davus (Max Minghella) is torn between love for his mistress and the chance of gaining his freedom by joining the movement to Christianity. Hypatia comes into increasing conflict with the leaders of the Christians in Alexandria. A box office smash in Spain last year, it won six Goyas. I’ve been looking forward to seeing Agora since La Mirada’s recent screening of Amenabar’s remarkable first feature Thesis. The director is probably best known in Australia for The Others.

South American director Claudia Llosa makes a considerable impact with her second feature, The Milk of Sorrow, examining Peru’s violent history through the story of a young woman who has contracted an illness from her mother’s breast milk. Opening on a black screen, we hear a sad song with disturbing lyrics about the atrocities committed during the former terrorist regime in Lima. Then we see a dying woman (Barbara Lazon) singing to her daughter Fausta (Magaly Solier) who inherits the deep sadness as a disease called ‘the frightened breast’.

Fausta, intending to give her mother a decent funeral and not be buried in the backyard, moves in with a kindly uncle and obtains a job as a maid to an aloof aristocratic pianist Aida (Susi Sanchez) in order to raise money. Timid Fausta must now face the realities of the city with its rough element and ghosts of the horrific past.

The wonder of this meditation on the aftermath of terrorism is to plunge you headfirst into the culture and lifestyle of a poverty-stricken Lima community. The film represents a graphic mix of the gritty realism of a documentary and more than a flash of Latin magic realism, coupled with a mastery of cinema technique.

Striking images abound - a white bridal veil in a crowded dirty yard, coffin shops, Fausta with a huge red flower in her mouth, steps to a shrine, and raucous weddings. There’s a strange beauty in local marriages and even in death, being an integral part of life in the slums of Lima. Magaly Solier has saintlike features, her sad eyes haunt the screen in clever tracking shots with the camera keeping her in close-up. Music, especially singing, is a vital part of the film; but be warned, the pacing is leisurely yet the film captures its audience completely.

With the popularity of those beloved television hospital soaps like Grey’s Anatomy and All Saints, fans of sick-and-dying sagas should flock to see For The Good of Others an arresting medical drama with a dark side, revolving around seriously ill people in a large city hospital. Produced by Alejandro Amenabar, the film has all the suspense of emergency wards and operating theatres coupled with what Spanish filmmakers love to include, that eerie touch of the supernatural. Diego (Eduardo Noriega) is a hard working doctor dealing with the extremely sick who becomes immune to their suffering. As the film opens, we are introduced to a number of terminally ill patients under Diego’s care. A distraught lover of a dying patient threatens Diego with a pistol, however the unnerving confrontation ends with the unfortunate man’s death.

Diego discovers he’s now apparently gifted with a healing touch and his patients rapidly improve. However this strange wonderful gift comes with a curse; which becomes apparent when Diego’s father is suddenly taken ill, and his daughter (Clara Lago) contracts a life-threatening disease. Diego is finally forced to make a terrible choice. Director Oskar Santos Gomez has a flair for clinical aspects of the story, while letting the underlying weirdness slowly take over. Looking the part, Eduardo Noriega brings to the role the right combination of cool efficiency and increasing unease as the situation unravels.

In the comedy department comes Road to Santiago, a wacky road trip in which a group of couples in failing relationships make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella under the expensive guidance of guru Olmo as part of a workshop to restore romance. Journalist Pilar (Malena Alterio) and her photographer Nacho (Fernando Tejero) go along incognito pretending to be a couple to get a story on Olmo for their magazine. Pilar, having just been dumped by her lover, has trouble acting as Nacho’s girlfriend; especially as they hate each other.

Also in the group are a ‘fake’ gay couple of blokes looking for dates, who find more than they bargained for when a hot little number much into oral hygiene makes - as only the Spanish could - the daily rite of cleaning teeth a sexual turn on. Filmed against pleasant scenery, with a running gag of an accident prone bike rider (a memory of European Vacation), and the considerable comic talent of Malena Alterio using her wild eyes like an mad opera singer in a silent movie. She steals the show for me especially when her lover turns up and joins the pilgrimage adding to the confusion in bucket loads.

Crab Trap is an unusual excursion into an inaccessible village of La Barra on the Columbian Pacific coast. A lone white traveler finds his way to the village and is stranded due to lack of a boat. He finds friendship with a small girl setting crab traps and develops varying relationships with other Afro-Columbian villagers. Moody and languidly paced with an odd Kafkaesque feeling. Crab Trap in common with The Milk of Sorrow offers another ethnological study of a remote culture.

Other worthy films this festival include Oscar winning Fernando Trueba’s The Dancer and the Thief, the whimsical tale of two ex-cons planning to pull off a daring heist in post-dictatorship Chile featuring Argentine actor Ricardo Darin (The Secret in Their Eyes). Borja Cobeaga’s Friends Zone a romantic comedy about friendship getting in the way of love, to be screened on opening night with The Lady and the Reaper the 2010 Oscar nominated animated short film. The wide variety of movies should inspire your interest, there's really something for everyone, just check out the full Spanish Film Festival program.

John Bale