World Report: Spain (March 2009)

[Editor’s note: I’d like to introduce to you our new Spanish film correspondent (Marta Martinez) who will of course focus on everything “Spain” – which means she’ll be talking about Almodóvar at length, but will also clue us in on the new names and films to emerge from this part of Europe.]

Film News: At Home

Compared to the less than impressive year in film we had last year, 2009 actually looks to be promising year in Spanish cinema and we were just reminded of it with the latest films to be released examples from titans such as Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro Amenábar. Both are currently past the post-production stages and precious details on the pair have been released in the past couple of weeks. Almodóvar’s Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces) is releasing trailers, behind-the-scenes excerpts and the poster one sheets to the media.

Thia inspired Warhol-styled poster reminds of the poster sheet of his last movie, Volver, Penélope Cruz’s facial expression is heightened by the abstract colors. The film’s synopsis seems to pick up elements from his other films, this specially tells us the story of Mateo Blanco (played by Lluís Homar), a screenplay writer who got hardly injured in car accident 14 years ago. In that tragedy, he did not only lose his sight, but also the woman he loved, Lena (Penélope Cruz). He has been trying to forget the past, even the person he was, but another car accident, this time by Diego, the son of his production’s director, leads him to talk about what then happened. Almodóvar has defined Broken as an “amour fou” story, full of misfortune, gelousy, abuse of power, treachery and feeling of guilt. The best definition of this whole story is a picture of two embraced lovers, broken into thousand pieces. Can’t wait for this one.

Almodóvar’s new movie will be released in Spain on March the 18th. To see Amenábar’s Ágora we will have to wait much longer: September 2009 is the domestic release date for this one. The big budget production (via Telecinco Cinema/Mod Producciones/Himenóptero), around 20 million euros, which is a considerable sum at least for a Spanish movie basically features Anglo-Saxon actors in the shape of Rachel Weisz and Max Minghella. Set in the 6th Century Egypt, where the disciple Orestes falls in love with his professor, the great female philosopher Hypatia.  

The national film awards of 2009, which took place on February, confirmed that last year was not the best year for local products. The Goya Awards night saw the favored films lose out in most major categories. It was a visible lack of unanimity this time, since the most well-known films, such as Los girasoles ciegos (The Blind Sunflowers) – the Spanish candidate to the Oscars– and Sólo quiero caminar (I only want to walk), which amassed respectively 15 and 11 nominations each, only earned a pair of awards each. The more controversial film, Camino, was the night’s big winner claiming 6 Goyas out of 7 nominations, and more importantly walking away with th Goyas for Best Film, Best Director (Javier Fesser) and Best Original Screenplay. Especially remarkable was the success of El truco del manco (translated as The one-handed trick), with a 3 out of 3 kind of night winning: Best New Director (Santiago A. Zannou), Best New Actor and Best Original Song. Its main actor, José Manuel Montilla, aka “El Langui” is a well-known rap-singer with his band La Excepción and in this movie, he plays a young guy who lives in a slum of Barcelona and wants to find his way in life launching a hip-hop band –so the fiction role was not so far away from his real life.

Film News: International Scene

The poster girl of the year for 2009, had a stellar year in 08′ — the repercussions were best felt this past February with the several awards going to Penélope Cruz for her supporting role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The Golden Globe, the BAFTA, the Spirit Award… just to mention some of them, and finally she culminated it all with an Oscar.

In the same month, the Berlinale gave another reason to cheer for our local cinema. The film festival awarded the Golden Bear to La Teta Asustada, which was actually a Peruvian-Spanish production. Claudia Llosa, its director, has been living in Barcelona for several years. She developed the project in this city and many of the people involved on the production were Catalan.

Marta Martinez resides in Barcelona and writes for several magazines including Barcelona Divina and Professional Events.