These are the movie premieres that hit the screens starting this June 30:
Por Philipp Engel
Greta Fernández is not credited as a screenwriter, although it is hard not to think of this film as a self-portrait. Isa, her character, does not have as many followers on social networks, but the coincidences are overwhelming: the actress also has a novelist mother, separated parents, is fond of photography, has confessed to having been in open relationships and declares herself as feminist as committed with the LGTBIQA cause. This is confirmed by the roles she chooses and some of the most torrid scenes in Unicornios. Like Isa, she could also have reason to feel frustrated: after the consecration of La hija del ladrón (Belén Funes, 2019) –Concha from San Sebastian included–, she did not get roles to match her talent and disdainful beauty, ambiguously contemporary with her. It would be foolish to argue that the influencer killed the movie star: the acting gene is evident, although she is much more Greta than (Eduard) Fernández (her father of hers), and here she gives everything for her character . The movie is her, in case it wasn’t clear.
The problem is that, like Isa, Àlex Lora’s film does not know very well what it wants either, although that indecision could fit a whole generational manifesto, or several. On the one hand, there is the usual youthful hedonism, here particularly fluid and polyamorous. Sex, drugs and songs with vocoder. Dance scenes and artificial euphoria effectively redrawn. On the other, a certain morality: the upright friend, the wrong decisions (easy money), the contradictions (possessive love), and above all a punishment that is perceived as excessive in the face of what may not be more than another case of capriciousness. egocentrism, the narcissism of those fantastic creatures who live in a world that does not exist, on the other side of the screen. There are also certain moments that border on caricature (the last heterosexual, who loses his temper) or ridiculous (theoretical feminism competition).
In the end, in the midst of a confusion that shoots out in very different directions, without finishing synthesizing them, we cannot stop empathizing with this wounded woman, who stands as a tragic heroine: she will never be able to be recognized by those close-up photos. in which she would like to disappear, to stop time, because she is simply not cynical enough to accept the rules of the game of the new culture of success, in which only likes count.
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
Últimas volunes is a topical thriller, insufficient as a whole, but it is explained with appreciable conviction. It’s a story we’ve seen over a hundred times already, but we don’t mind seeing it one more time. A story of universal scope: it takes place here as it could take place in Oslo, in Rome or, of course, in any corner of the United States, the place from which we have been told the most times. The protagonist is a tough and twilight guy, just out of prison, who tries not to fall back on the wild side of life, but he has his destiny tattooed on his face and we understand from the first minute that all the sins committed years ago they will bill it. The stereotype of the loser.
A professional cook, this anti-hero starts working in his brother’s restaurant, but he doesn’t get along with his sister-in-law, who also works in the kitchen (wounds from the past that we’ll discover as we go along). He has a son whom he abandoned when he was still a child and now he is in trouble with some juvenile delinquents. There are also a handful of gangsters (or a bad caricature of some gangsters: the worst part of the show) in this pressure cooker that is about to explode. And an old lover who will have an important role in the story. oh! And a friendly priest, because tough guys (Clint Eastwood, for example) sometimes need spiritual refuge.
The final third chains bloody situations in a somewhat hasty way, but the film resists reasonably well until its predictable outcome. And if it holds up to its conventional plot and its weakest moments, it is because here is a high-class cast, headed by a Fernando Tejero who emerges gracefully from his change of register and in which the brilliant compositions of Carlos Santos, Adriana Ozores and, especially, stand out. , Óscar Casas in a high-risk role: he too could have easily fallen for the caricature, but he is magnificent.
By Salvador Llopart
To fit or not to fit. Being someone normal, whatever that means. Or be a monster to others. Typically adolescent dilemma that Ruby, the fifteen-year-old protagonist of the new installment of Dreamworks -Shrek’s company- makes come true. Indeed, she carries a monster inside her: it is the Kraken, a marine creature typical of mythological legends, capable of sinking ships with its tentacles. Rudy embodies the struggle between the will to belong and the will to accept her singular difference.
The result, due to its tawdry, makes water on the narrative side. Especially in its final stretch. The drawing is something else: with a bright color palette, it approaches the chromatic simplicity of a candy store. And her sweetness too. Despite the monstrous nature of the proposal, the story ends up being simple and stretched out like a lollipop.
PorPh. Obstacle
The Algerians Mounia Meddour and Lyna Khoudri join forces again, after the very refreshing Papicha (2019), for a very similar film, both aesthetically and in terms of theme and plot. Presented with the pleasing photography of Léo Lefèvre (bright colors, solar reflections, magic hour) and a dynamic editing, it is once again a story of female overcoming in a hostile environment, marked by atavistic machismo, terrorist violence, the incompetence of the authorities and the migratory drama, without disregarding the country’s traditions.
If in Papicha the dream to achieve was a fashion show, here it is a dance show, with the addition that the charming Khoudri will have to achieve it after having been rendered speechless as a result of a brutal attack. Faced with not a few misfortunes, the film recommends resisting with the sunniest of smiles.
By S. Llopart
If this film were a mayonnaise, we would say that it doesn’t quite flirt. The ingredients that make up the drama don’t mix well. French social cinema, badly cooked, to continue with the culinary metaphor, with confusing leaps of time and situation. Based on the true story of a famous French pastry chef of North African origin, the set offers a strange flavor. The racial conflict of, for example, La Haine, beaten with Rocky’s desire for victory and peppered with melodramatic life in the kitchen, à la MasterChef. The products do not combine well, and the result is tawdry and predictable, like the whiskey tart on the Sunday menu of yesteryear.
Por Ph. Obstacle
It is curious that Ireland, a country from which so many emigrants have left, presents itself here as a possible host land for Aisha (impressive Letitia Wright), a young Nigerian who has requested asylum after her father was murdered for not being able to repay the debt. that he contracted to be able to pay for college. In the antipodes of tremendousness, Frank Berry leaves this and other misfortunes out of the picture, even reducing them to silence before the word explodes, when Aisha is finally forced to verbalize her traumas so that they give her refuge. In addition to the family tragedy and the brutal clash between the first and third worlds, the Irish filmmaker maintains the same restraint to tell the frugal romance between Aisha and the character of a perfect Josh O’Connor, a sad security guard. Economy of means, maximum emotion.
