San Sebastián Int. Film Festival: Progress Report: Elena Trapé’s ‘Blog’ & Peter Mullan’s Neds Buzz Titles

The 58th edition of the San Sebastián Int. Film Festival got its start this past Saturday with a inaugural ceremony in which an absent Roman Polanski was awarded the 2010 FIPRESCI award from the international critics for The Ghost Writer. Olivia Williams, one of the actresses from the film, received the award on his behalf from the hands of the president of the international federation of cinema critics, Jan Lumholdt.

The festival’s opening film was Chicogrande from director Felipe Cazals, a veteran filmmaker who was already awarded at the festival for Los Motivos de Luz. The film, which has been well received, is a recreation of the Mexican revolution through the eyes of a man that saved the life of a wounded Pancho Villa in the year 1916. The film stars Damián Alcázar, Daniel Mártinez and Juan Manuel Bernal.

Abel, Diego Luna’s directing debut which was previously shown in Sundance and Cannes, was the title in charge of opening the section Horizontes Lejanos, in a way the Mexican film shares with “Chicogrande” some social commentaries about the actual situation of the country but from different narrative and stylistic point of view. Here, the film tells the story of a little 9 year-old autistic boy who assumes both the role of father and husband once this one decides to abandon them. John Malkovich serves as a producer and commented at the festival he doesn´t discard to collaborate in future projects with Luna, one which might be the adaptation of a Sebastián Rotella book about the frontier between Mexico and the U.S. “Abel” which is kind of a loosely based adaptation of the Shakespearian “Hamlet”, stars Christopher Ruiz-Esparza and José María Yazpik.

The second day of the festival entered dark and polemic territory with the projection of I Saw The Devil from Kim Jee-Woon (The Good, The Bad and The Weird). The film shocked both audience and critics back in it’s domestic release and in the context of this festival has been criticized its inclusion as an official section. Nonetheless the majority of the national press has applauded the decision to include such a mature, serious reflection about violence and its limits, besides, there has been talks about how this film will mark a departure from the conservative style of past editions and the new direction the festival is entering since it changed its president this year. 

 Finally, El Gran Vázquez, the first Spanish film shown at the official section, and with a high rate of expectation ended up disappointing and receiving mixed reviews. The film, from director Óscar Aíbar, is a biopic about comic strip writer and illustrator Manuel Vázquez. Apparently, besides the acclaimed work from Santiago Segura as the titular character, the problem with the film is its bad combination of drama and comedy, as it feels forced and breaks the pace and the narrative of the film which ends up distracting the audience from its main themes. 

On the other side, Blog the spanish film from newcomer Elena Trapé, (see pic above) and that was presented at the Zabaltegui-New Directors, surprised everyone and has been one of the best critically acclaimed films presented at the festival so far. The film is a mockumentary about teen life using things like youtube, the webcam and the messenger as stylistic tools to portrait the day by day of seven spanish 15 year old girls. The film which lacks a script and was filmed using just an outline and brief synopsis to be followed by the actresses has been praised for its fresh and too real portrait of the teenager world.

And finally, Chilean director Raúl Ruiz presented Misterios de Lisboa a 4 1/2 hour opus that has been qualified as a boring and excrutiating soap opera that made lots of people exit the theater during its projection. The same day, Peter Mullan saw more accolades receiving a warm reaction with Neds, another social commentary about school violence in his native Scotland.