Por Philipp Engel
Pixar’s romance with abstraction began wildly with the cerebral Inside Out (2015), a complex film about how emotions control our brain, and continued with Soul (2020), which told us about the path to the afterlife of an African-American musician. with a white soul Both were by Pete Docter, were widely acclaimed, and left open the question of whether Pixar wasn’t already more for adults than kids. Elemental, a film by Peter Sohn (Arlo’s Journey) about a fantastic world populated by characters who descend from each of the four elements, could have followed this trend, although it is received rather as a trivialization of it, with the balance much more decanted to the children’s audience, despite the fact that it squeezes, to the last drop and sometimes without a spark of grace (sic), all the jokes and puns related to the semantic field of water and fire. In the end it is a Romeo and Juliet between a liquid bureaucrat –Nile, like the river– and the heiress of a flamboyant grocery store called Candela.
Although there are also secondary scene-stealers in the form of thunderclouds or pieces of land combed with all sorts of vegetable headdresses. Among the funniest, the weakness for the crying of the aquatic family, and some gags about abrasive food that remind us of the last chilli pepper that exploded in our stomach. The impossible love story, which also reads as a hymn to diversity and mixing in a country where the ghost of segregation is very much alive, turns out to be as cloying as Lauv’s song that was supposed to steal our hearts, and the as overwhelming as usual display of media seems arranged to show off a large budget more than to amaze the viewer.
It’s still a nice chilled plan to spend an afternoon with the kids, but it looks like an AI-generated Pixar: it has all the elements, but it lacks soul. It falls well below recent peaks such as the very contemporary Red (2022) or Luca’s nostalgic tarantella (2021). The same goes for the short that preceded it, Carl’s Date: although it stars the venerable old man in the tear-jerking Up (2009), it doesn’t go much further than reminding us that hair dye is not a foolproof rejuvenating effect.
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
Here is a Tunisian Alcarràs. Figs instead of peaches, but a very similar look, very clean and clear, to the people picking the fruit. Of course, in Carla Simón’s masterpiece the plot branched off in various directions, while in Erige Sehiri’s film everything centers on the fig trees, during a day under the sun. There is nothing else. Might put the staff off: a film that exclusively sees men and (mostly) women of various ages picking figs from the tree and putting them in their baskets, then boxes.
Early in the day, the boss takes his workers to the fig trees in his truck; when the sun goes down, he does the reverse route, with the day laborers singing together, as if the hard work had inoculated them with happiness. Throughout these hours we see a veteran woman teach a young man how to reach the figs without hurting the branches and how to recognize those that are ripe. We witness banal conversations about love and marriage, family, social networks, and so on. We witness flirtations between boys and girls. A break to rest, eat and regain strength. There are dramatic conflicts, although rather mild: the heated discussion between two girls infatuated with the same lover, the dispute over miserable wages, a fainting spell, the boss’s concern about the theft of boxes of figs…
It is therefore understood that Entre las fig trees, a luminous and jovial film, lacks a plot in the traditional sense, but captivates us, and a lot, due to the natural tone that surrounds it, due to the closeness of the characters (Sehiri’s camera is always where he should be, moving between the pages with appropriate fluidity) and the honesty with which he contemplates them. At its core there is a humanism close to Jean Renoir, Toni’s Renoir or The southerner; that is to say, the filmmaker who knew how to look, with tact and modesty (and admiration), at people working
By Salvador Llopart
What if Dalí had met Ferran Adrià? The meeting did not actually take place. We know that Godot never arrives: the important thing is the wait. Like here: waiting for Dalí in what, in time, will be El Bulli. Pujol, as director, has created an endearing farce that recreates the magic of the Catalan Mediterranean in the contradictory seventies. The light is there, as is the conflict between the old and the new. And how are some superb interpreters, one by one, and all at the same time.
Por Philipp Engel
Arranged marriage between a traumatized woman and a miserable farmer. They are the two outcasts from a remote town in China, controlled by an exploitative local chieftain and subject to real estate speculation. The aridity of the subject is compensated by the spectacular acting work of the couple and the complexity of some of the compositions, but above all by a candid humanism à la Kurosawa – the farmer is the last good man, with a single and very brief episode of toxic masculinity. The only downside is the ending.
By Salvador Llopart
If nothing makes sense, is everything allowed? Nada speaks, with authority and a sense of rhythm, of the obsession of Danish teenagers with proving to themselves that some things matter. Absurd spiral of challenges – the absurd in the manner of Camus – to impress a colleague who, like a rampant baron, has decided to climb a tree to escape the nonsense of life. An existential thriller, then, where the young performers go where the reason of their elders does not go.
Por Philipp Engel
Due to its approach, this secret jewel may be reminiscent of Behind the Glass, the Villaronga classic: a woman takes care of the invalid responsible for the death of her husband. The ghost here, instead of Nazism, is asbestos. And then everything is different. It is a bold film, intelligent in its way of unfolding the plot, and with excellent actors who know how to show the complexities of resentment and the everlasting theme of redemption through a relationship in which attraction and repulsion are intermingled.
By Salvador Llopart
We have the ideas. We are in beliefs, and they cost more to change. This film points towards the myopia of the left – that of the right – in the face of the fight for the right to homosexuality. It is a pamphlet proposal less in moments of intimacy, where the interpreters shine with their own light. Italy, sixties. A journalist from the newspaper of the “great workers’ party”, as they said then, highlights, with his presence, the power of beliefs (on the left).
